First up, a quick hello from me. I’m HallyuNoona and I am lucky enough to have just joined up with the OH!Press team. I hope to bring you some cool, informative and entertaining content! Don’t be shy to approach me, I don’t bite and I love to talk to people, especially about any Korean culture stuff! Now, onward-ho to my first post for you guys!
A lot of discussion has been floating around the net recently about Kpop trends past and present, so I thought it would be fine to take a look at some of these trends in a bit more detail. Who knows – if you like a particular trend, it might introduce you to some more music you might like and if you hated a trend, maybe one artist’s interpretation could change your mind!
For the first trend I thought I would pick one that is current and unavoidable. The cartoonishly colourful sets and costumes. Bright colours have always been a big part of Kpop, especially the cuter side, but over the past year or two this vibrant theme has upped its game to a whole new level, with our favourite stars looking like they have been popped into a childrens’ TV set for filming.
Cast your mind back, if you will, to 2012. Ah those heady days of Kpop. We were so young… carefree… 2014 hadn’t happened yet! Remember that oh so colourful Girl’s Day brilliance ‘Oh My God!’?
Super colourful isn’t it? Well that is what we thought at the time. Boy were we wrong.
Fast forward to 2014 and AOA throw ‘Short Hair’ at us, upping their colour game from Miniskirt to a vibrant, eye catching level.
Next up, we have EXID blowing my mind (and, some months later, everyone else’s :P) with ‘UP&DOWN’.
MY EYES! The COLOUR IS BLINDING!!!
The height of summer 2014 bought us Girl’s Day not wanting to be knocked off of their colourful perch from ‘Oh My God’ with the super colourful summer song ‘Darling’.
New girl group MINX debuted with a hot ‘trend of the moment’ video in 2014 which I liked to think helped them achieve their fairly high profile debut!
Song Jieun (of Secret) braved the colours as far into the year as OCTOBER when she dropped ‘25’….that’s a brave girl!
It has been a mostly girl group trend, but at that peak in 2014, even boy groups jumped on it with Block B bringing us the crazy colourful ‘HER’.
Of course, it’s not an entirely new trend – odd songs have been popping up for years, like SNSD’s ‘I Got a Boy’ and ‘Oh’. AOA even dabbled with it previously in some of the scenes for ‘Moya’. Whether it was the case, or simply felt that way, 2014 seemed to be a tipping point for an influx of this style throughout Kpop.
2015 has seen the rise of a new set of music video trends including a more muted bright colour concept evident in Hello Venus’ ‘Sticky, Sticky’ and Red Velvet’s ‘Ice Cream’. But, with summer approaching, expect to see some groups embrace this look again, especially with the great girl group war of Summer ’15 underway.
So far this year we have had Amber asking us to ‘Shake that Brass’ and Sistar asking us to ‘Shake It’, both of whom have taken the trend even further by actually putting cartoon text explosions into their videos.
AOA have continued to wave the flag for bright, fun colours with ‘Heart Attack’.
BESTie certainly didn’t let EXID upstage them on this one with the amazing video for ‘Excuse Me’ embracing the trend wholeheartedly.
Even Nugu and fast growing cuties LABOUM have embraced the blinding brightness with their cute, upbeat song ‘Sugar Sugar’.
Of course some people are born to be trendsetters, so let’s acknowledge for a moment, the original (in my eyes) queens of the colour splash: Ladies Code.
This is one of my favourite trends of recent years and I for one can’t get enough of it – long may it continue! As we move into autumn, I expect a move to the more muted bright colours however and it remains to be seen whether the trend will re-emerge in such force next summer or whether it will replaced by something new.
What do you think of the bright light, bright colour trend, are you a fan or does it make your eyes bleed?
What do you think will be the trend to replace it, or what group would you like to see take it on?
Let me know in the comments!
