The Tangled Web of Confusion – Get Off My Lawn

The following is my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect those of the other Selective Hearing staff.

One evening I was having a discussion with a friend in the IW chat room and we ended up talking about the influence of the hallyu wave on J-Pop. My friend’s basic feelings towards the subject were summed up with the following statement.

Keep the K-Pop away from my J-Pop.

That of course is paraphrasing but that was the feeling I got out of the conversation. To me that’s like the equivalent of some crotchety old dude screaming “GET OFF MY LAWN!” at the young people letting their dogs take a dump on said old guy’s freshly manicured grass.  A somewhat inaccurate analogy but you get my point I hope.

It made me wonder if others had the same feeling. It was confirmed when the teaser for Buono’s Partenza ~Let’s Go!~ was released. Some fans were vocal about their dislike of the song and were making sacrifices to the Hello! Project gods asking them to stop the torture and bring back the girl rock Buono! sound.

Those who have heard the Partenza album know that the two K-Pop-like songs were just anomalies and all turned out to be status quo in the end. But they had everyone scared for a while didn’t they? I bet a lot of you were cringing at the thought of Buono! becoming high fashion, sunglass wearing, booty shaking pop tarts who are doomed to an eternity of auto-tune.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. So what if your favorite J-Pop group is starting to sound like their K-Pop cousins? Are you going to like them less because of that? Is your personal bias against K-Pop so great that you will abandon ship on a group you a supposed fan of? I figure this blatant borrowing would encourage people to learn about influence behind the change in direction.

Not that it will change anyone’s mind, Personally I just want people to make somewhat informed bashing about a genre they can’t stand. It’s okay to shoot your mouth off when you have something factual to back up your argument besides “auto-tune sucks”. That argument is extremely played out and while it is true, it applies to more than just K-Pop these days. (Auto-tune is more of a universal plague infecting many nations.)

I don’t see anything wrong with a little bit of borrowing from the current hot sound. American and Korean (and to some extent European) Electro Pop is much more marketable than the Japanese version. Sorry to burst your bubble, but Japanese Electro pop still seems kind of obscure and hipster outside of Nakata’s works.

Looking at things from a wider perspective, the entire foundation of modern music is based on stealing from other sources. What makes this any different? Perhaps some are afraid that the “uniquely Japanese” quality of J-Pop will somehow be diluted or bastardized by the influence of K-Pop productions.

Or perhaps they are like the crotchety old man and just don’t like people shitting in their yard.