As I write this very review, it has been precisely four days since Olivia Rodrigo, the world’s latest iconic pop girly, released GUTS to the world. Suffice it to say, it was a step in the right direction for her (at least, from my perspective).
I think I may have been one of the only people on this planet who didn’t obsess over SOUR. I liked most of the singles, but I found it to be a largely repetitive album full of the same sad song in a bunch of different keys. Yet, due to significant peer pressure and my own dedication to supporting fellow teenage girls, I decided to give GUTS a listen. After all, even if it was another sad album, I cry sometimes. Why not update my sad playlist a little?
What I found instead was so much more than I anticipated.
Now, is GUTS a perfect album? No, but is it a step in the right direction for Rodrigo? One thousand percent, yes. As I said before, my main criticism of SOUR was that it all sounded so similar. This latest album took that criticism to heart and made absolutely sure it did not happen again. GUTS is an eclectic, emotional, egregiously catchy sophomore album that perfectly encapsulates the angst of being 19 and having no idea where life is going to take you (a struggle that I clearly cannot relate to at all, cough cough).
Say what you will about Olivia Rodrigo, but she knows how to open an album. “brutal” was a standout on SOUR, with its pop-punk leanings and artfully torn production. Out of all of the genres Rodrigo allows to influence her music, I definitely like her pop-punk tracks the most, and “all-american bitch” delivers on that same grit. Another thing that Rodrigo has always done right is the specific relatability of her lyrics, and the parallels between “brutal” and “all-american bitch” are yet again apparent here. I remember laughing out loud when I heard a 17-year-old Rodrigo gripe “I can’t even parallel park” on her debut album’s opener, and this opener inspired the same reaction but with a darker undertone to it. I ended up laughing at the lines, “I’m grateful all the time/I’m sexy and I’m kind/I’m pretty when I cry.” For one reason, it comes in a pure, harmonized cadence that almost invokes church music right after the bridge, which is full of screaming. Peak comedy from Rodrigo there. However, I also laughed because this song so perfectly paints the picture of a girl becoming a woman. It’s darkly funny, but also deeply painful, and much of this album delivers on that same bittersweet feeling.
The album keeps up its energy on the second track and second single of the album, “bad idea right?” which is just an absolute blast. It’s so clear while listening to GUTS that Rodrigo is having a ton of fun with these songs, and that’s one of the many positive consequences of her breaking out of her ballad-heavy shell post-SOUR. There are still ballads on this album, but I would argue that they hit harder because there are fewer of them. Songs like “making the bed” and “the grudge” would not be stand-outs on SOUR because they would be one of many, but the variety of GUTS lets these songs have the moments they deserve.
Don’t get me wrong, this album will absolutely rip your heart out if you let it. The first time I listened to the album’s closer, “teenage dream,” I audibly gasped at some of the lyrics. As a 19-year-old girl, I no longer know how to act normal after hearing “got your whole life ahead of you, you’re only nineteen/but I fear they already got all the best parts of me.” For me though, the part that truly broke my heart was the end, a cacophony of repetition as Rodrigo sings, “they all say that it gets better/it gets better the more you grow/yeah, they all say that it gets better/it gets better, but what if I don’t?” The simple terror of those lines really can ruin your life if you let them.
Yet, this album, as I previously mentioned, is also simply a lot of fun. There are plenty of songs on there that are great for dancing and singing along. “ballad of a homeschooled girl,” “get him back!,” and “love is embarrassing” are all chaotic, unapologetically fun songs that get the listener dancing. They’re also just plain funny, and I adore a funny pop song. “ballad of a homeschooled girl” contains the lines “everything I do is tragic/every guy I like is gay,” which again made me laugh out loud the first time I heard it. The entirety of “get him back!” is not only absurdly catchy, it’s also a truly hilarious song that goes further with the exploration of more industrial production that started back on SOUR with “jealousy, jealousy.” Finally, “love is embarrassing” mixes danceable guitars, painfully true lyrics, and breathy, choppy vocal styling (I am truly obsessed with the bridge of this song) to create what is definitely one of my favorite songs on the album.
Overall, I think I can safely call myself a fan of Olivia Rodrigo now. My character development from a SOUR hater to a massive fan of GUTS has been exciting, and I am proud to say that I now consider myself to be one of the girls who gets it when it comes to Olivia Rodrigo. This album gets a 9 out of 10 from me- it’s not perfect, but it’s damn near close as far as I’m concerned, and the occasional cringey line or my personal dislike of ballads will not stop me from obsessing over it. I’ve got to support my fellow messy teenage girls, especially when they’re creating art that I find so personally relatable and impactful, and I highly recommend giving GUTS a listen.
How Brandi Carlile and this album came into my life is, admittedly, a mystery. In short, I’m a faithful user of the Shazam app. Hint of a catchy chorus in the grocery store? Shazam. Intriguing instrumental break in the background of a commercial? Shazam. A voice that I think I know but I can’t name and it’s right on the tip of my tongue…you get the gist. But how or why “You and Me On The Rock” appeared in my Shazam-ed tracks on Thanksgiving Day…I truly couldn’t tell you. I’ve wracked my brain over and over trying to figure it out but I don’t even remember opening the app that day. Being the romanticizer that I am, I like to think that it was just meant to be.
This heavy-hitting masterpiece is Carlile’s latest studio album, released on October 1st, 2021, which also happens to be the day before my birthday (what can I say…it’s gotta be fate). And just to further prove its worth, it received a whopping seven Grammy nominations, bringing home three of those awards in February.
Just a quick note about Brandi: I’m a relatively new fan, seeing as it was this album that introduced me to her music, but it didn’t take long before I started a deep-dive into her discography and became invested. Put simply, I adore her. When I listened to In These Silent Days for the first time, the connection was instantaneous. Reading interviews that she’s done for this album has been nothing short of enchanting. She speaks the same way she writes lyrics, with an uncanny sense of realness to remind you that she’s just a human like the rest of us. She doesn’t hide and she doesn’t hold anything back. Not to mention she is effortlessly hysterical. It’s not very often that I find myself charmed when the interviewer includes Brandi’s exclamation over the phone as her 110 lb. dog comes unexpectedly flying into the room to cut her off mid-sentence.
It’s still a bit of a wonder to me that In These Silent Days has only ten songs; a perfect, concise, even ten songs. This album is packed to the brim with intricate musical and lyrical content, each song deeply rooted in raw, human emotion, enough to punch you in the gut every now and then. Granted, Carlile had a lot of emotional material to work with, given that this album was largely conceived during the early months of COVID, in the midst of those seemingly endless, “silent days.”
In the next part of this review, you’ll find enchantingly disjointed thoughts on my top five picks from the album. Choosing only five songs to feature was painfully difficult…but you didn’t come here to read an essay.
Unsurprisingly, I can’t say enough about “You and Me On The Rock.” It’s impossible to not crack a smile while listening to this song and it’s no shock that this is the most listened-to song on the album, racking up three of those seven Grammy nominations. The cheerful mood-boosting track channels that call for raw emotion into simple, sweet feelings of love for another. In an interview with Stereogum, Carlile notes that during the early days of COVID, she, like so many of us, felt her career and her identity be snatched away. But it left her with what she calls her “rock,” composed of her family and also faith, the latter a concept that is frequently touched upon in this album. It was this “rock” that inspired this heartwarming and blissfully domestic song. You’ll also hear delightful backing vocals from Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Lucius, who Carlile invited to be part of the track after producing their album, Second Nature. Unfortunately for me, I’m not only a romanticizer but a bit of a hopeless romantic as well. Sometimes this song hits a little too hard, but always in the best of ways.
“Broken Horses” comes out of left field, shattering the dreamy, folky trance that the previous tracks have put you in with its driving rock n’ roll feel and the harsh vocals that Carlile adopts. Personally, I can’t listen to this song without remembering the spectacular performance that she put on at the 2023 Grammy Awards in February. If you ask me, every song on this album demands a Grammy performance but Broken Horses was the song to do it with. In an interview after the show, Carlile noted the significance of the recognition the song received in the rock category and how she feels it’s inviting her team to explore a new sound, one that sounds a little more like rock n’ roll. In her words, rock n’ roll describes what they do in their music, taking the risk, putting everything they have out there. And that was certainly evident during the Grammys.
I don’t like to play favorites too much…but I have to admit that I’m partial to “Mama Werewolf,’ purely because it was the song that jolted me the most when I first listened to the album in its entirety. From start to finish, the song is one big, beautiful, poetic metaphor and that brings me an indescribable sense of joy (English major things, y’know?). Comparatively, it breaks the pattern of warm tracks with a more sinister introduction in a minor key. It puts you on edge a little, a feeling that you haven’t yet gotten from the album. The lyrics express Carlile’s (and I’m sure a great deal of others’) deep desire to be a good parent, while feeling herself slipping into her own generational flaws and the agony of knowing that those despised qualities won’t change. I love the idea of transformation that is embedded in these lyrics, that you can feel a “beast” come out of you at times, and then suddenly turn around again wondering how it happened. We all know the feeling in some way or another. But what I find most profound within the lyrics is that simple ask for another to “strike you down,” and be that “silver bullet in the gun.” The song cuts deep, but by the second or third listen, you start wanting it to.
“Stay Gentle” is pretty self-explanatory and there isn’t really much I need to say. Just go listen to it. It’s a bright, reflective song that everyone needs to hear and remember. The first few times I listened, I was beginning to think I wanted it to be played on my wedding day. But it wasn’t necessarily written to be the sweet parent-to-child ballad that it seems. Instead it’s directed towards the common thread that Carlile sees between her young children and many of her aging friends, legends like Joni Mitchell and Kris Kristofferson: gentleness. And she said it best in her Stereogum interview: “What is it about the world that sort of steals our gentleness and then gives it back to us just in time for us to realize that we should’ve just stayed that way?”
Admittedly, “Sinners, Saints, and Fools” is another song that I can’t do justice to in mere words. This track is where Carlile really takes a deep dive into the concept of faith and the song is, in some ways, a representation of the contrast to what she personally believes and what faith means to her. It’s a thoughtfully concocted story of the harshness that can stem from well-intentioned beliefs, beautifully illustrated through its electric edginess. I feel that what makes the track so sinister is the inclusion of the strings, which haven’t yet been featured on the album to this point. Like “Broken Horses”, it’s easy to feel the rock influence in the music for “Sinners, Saints, and Fools”. And even if you take nothing else away from it, at least stay for the last minute of the song. You won’t be sorry you did.
Overall, I think it was the rawness and the relatability in this album that drew me so forcefully to it and keeps me coming back again and again. If you want my advice, carve out forty minutes in your day to sit down with a good pair of headphones and let this record play from top to bottom. You’ll find that you get this delightful kind of whiplash every time a new song comes on and it’s nothing short of a pleasure to experience.
When was the last time you won something? Maybe it was bingo, or fifteen bucks in a scratch-off. Either way, you’re probably like me and don’t win as often as you would like to, but when you do win, it’s something spectacular. My girlfriend forwarded an email to me from Maggie Rogers with information about a “private concert” being held at Mickey’s Black Box in Lititz, Pennsylvania. Seats are limited so to keep the numbers down (and to keep Ticketmaster from crashing) the tickets were given to people by random selection if they entered into the lottery drawing. I filled everything out on a Tuesday evening and waited patiently, or at least until I fell asleep. I went to work the next day, and the next, and completely forgot about it. Friday afternoon came around and I checked my inbox, usually brimming with nonsense, to see an email from Ticketmaster that read: “you’re in”. I’m in what? What did I- ohh.
Needless to say I quickly realized what that meant and I had to explain to my girlfriend that since she was indeed the one who sent me this information, she could not be the one to beat me senseless with her Birkenstock. She was in California at the time and couldn’t come with me, so I’d like to think that made us even. I made the drive up the night of the concert and blended in with the crowd at the Black Box, a venue that’s brand-spanking new and just the right size for an artist like Maggie Rogers.
This concert was my favorite live performance I’ve ever seen, period. She’s not my favorite artist, but there’s no doubt she’s incredibly talented and worth your listen. Her new album, Surrender, was written during the pandemic and is filled with everything she missed about live performances and what music could make her feel. This mentality of music isn’t shared by everyone, but when it’s shared with everyone, it becomes a universal feeling. Something about her performance combined with the quality of the audio in the room just blew my mind. I went into this concert knowing how much of her time and energy was poured into this record and it gave me a completely different mindset to have about a concert. There’s a whole new appreciation you gain for artists when you understand what their music means to them, as well as all music in general. Being able to just stand in the same room as them and letting them sing to you is absolutely incredible.
The last time I was at a concert it was Firefly. If you’re unfamiliar with what that is, it’s an outdoor multi-day concert that has several headlining artists and multiple stages within the Dover woodlands. There’s also a tree house but that’s neither here nor there, my point is the last concert I went to was not the best acoustic experience. This beat that by miles because of the venue and the FOH engineer, who I made sure to complement at the end of the show. Clair Brothers engineers know their stuff, obviously. The venue is owned by Clair as well as staffed by them when certain artists are in town. They’re one of the largest companies you’ve never heard of.
Rogers already toured Europe at the end of 2022 and was gearing up for her U.S. tour. It was exciting to be at what was essentially a rehearsal for the second part of her tour and with that, there were a few hiccups but nothing that deterred from the essence of the performance. I’m sure when I see her again at Radio City Music Hall, it will be even more spectacular. However, I’m not sure I’ll get that smaller-venue experience again. If you’re looking for the best concert experience possible for your favorite artists, try and find a venue they’re coming to that’s way smaller than normal. There are artists and groups that can cater to larger crowds better than others, but everyone can rock the box if they wanted to.
Super Bowl LVII was not a good one for Eagles fans. After essentially dominating the first three quarters, consistent defensive errors and a final gut-wrenching field goal by the Chiefs led to Philly’s downfall. However, not everything is utterly terrible at the moment. After all, the Super Bowl brought a loss to the City of Brotherly Love, but it also brought Rihanna back to performing after a seven (yes, seven) year hiatus. To people like myself, who proudly told my friends that I was watching “Rihanna featuring the Eagles,” this was the big moment I had been anticipating with bated breath for months. And, of course, she did not disappoint.
Rihanna has not dropped an album since 2016’s Anti. She has instead focused on becoming a makeup mogul, fashion icon, and mother. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Rihanna no matter what business she is in, and while I can’t afford Fenty Beauty, I’ve literally only heard good things. Yet, my favorite Rihanna will always be Popstar Rihanna, one of the top hitmakers of the 2000s and early-2010s. The power of a fashionable, confident, unapologetically camp black woman in pop music was simply incredible, and then just like that, she disappeared from stages, supposedly never to perform “Diamonds” again. Hearts were broken, tears were shed. It was a tragic day for music.
Naturally, when Rihanna was announced as this year’s Super Bowl show, I was ecstatic, as were many others, and the show she delivered did not disappoint.
Rihanna, clad in an all-red jumpsuit, managed to deliver a spectacular performance of a dozen of her hits, despite having been out of the performance game for seven years and also casually announcing her second pregnancy. If there is one thing she knows how to do, it is get people talking. Who better than to deliver a spectacle in the middle of the world’s biggest football game?
At this point, I think it’s clear that I genuinely screamed when I recognized the beginning of “Rude Boy.” Call me a fan, I’m not sorry.
Now, a lot of people did have problems with the halftime show. Some of those concerns are valid, but also easily countered. For example, a friend of mine expressed that they wished she had danced more. Honestly, me too, but I think the 100+ backup dancers definitely did the job, especially considering the fact that Rihanna is clearly pregnant (maybe my only genuine criticism is that the backup dancers looked ridiculous. I missed part of the set because I was laughing too hard at the image of 25 dancers in massive puffer jackets T-posing their way into the show). She did her best, and that’s all we can ask of her.
Another criticism gaining traction online is that the halftime show was only Rihanna. No special, unannounced guests, which has become a sort of tradition for Super Bowl halftime performers. People theorized that Eminem or Jay-Z would emerge from a sideline and launch into one of their extremely famous songs, with these claims growing especially once the first few notes of Rihanna’s Grammy-winning 2009 hit “Run This Town” played, which was a collaboration with both Ye (previously known as Kanye West) and Jay-Z. But, no one emerged other than hundreds of backup dancers in the previously-mentioned hilarious outfits.
I contend that doing this by herself was a power move on Rihanna’s part. After all, this was meant to be her moment. Bringing out a collaborator would have added to the hype, sure, but it also would have taken away from the main event, Riri herself. Refusing to bring out any of her countless past collaborators was a strong message of confidence, saying “this moment is allmine.” She is enough of a spectacle by herself, she knows that, and she owns that.
In short, this was definitely a great halftime performance that I highly recommend watching if you missed it or rewatching if you did see it. Come for the hits, stay for the fashion, the iconic homage to Fenty Beauty, and of course, the pregnancy announcement. There truly was something for everyone, and Rihanna’s triumphant return to live performance was just as it sounds: in a word, perfect.
I don’t normally lay down and listen to an album straight through; I don’t sit still for very long to do so. When you’re on the beach and tired of listening to the banter around you, the best option is to plug in and tune out. This is my first album review ever, so if I did this wrong I apologize. I’ll stick to the car reviews from here on. I felt obligated to write one for this album by one of my favorite bands because this is the album that made them my favorite. Wolf Alice’s “Blue Weekend” from last year was my summer anthem this year.
The English alt-rock group, debuting in 2010 as an acoustic duo with Ellie Rowsell as lead singer and Joff Oddie as guitarist, officially formed their band in 2012. In their latest album they pull from their London roots for songs like “Smile” and “Play The Greatest Hits”, both gushing with classic Brit rock and punk respectively. The songs I blast the most are “Delicious Things”, “How Can I Make It Ok?”, and “The Beach II”. These are all what I, and I assume others as well, call story songs. These three tell stories of making it big-time, being there for people and wanting to understand, to enjoying those special moments we take for granted. The instrumental parts in “How Can I Make It Ok?” are really fun when, dare I say, the beat drops. It’s just one of those tunes that you wait in anticipation for the guitars to wail while you’re sitting at a red light. I should know, I speak from experience. The guitar at the end of “The Beach II” scratches that itch in your brain that only music can. Go check out what I’m babbling about for yourself, you’ll understand.
The last few songs on the album are titled as “The Pool Sessions”, which I can only imagine was recorded with the bare-essentials. The backyard concert vibe these recorded versions have are absolutely fantastic. They returned to their acoustic roots for the re-recorded versions of “Smile”, “How Can I Make It Okay?”, “Safe From Heartbreak”, and “The Last Man On Earth”. Sitting on the beach listening to the album all the way through was fantastic since that’s the best setting I can think of for an album run-through, especially when the first song is titled “The Beach”. The band covered “Bobby” by Alex G and is listed as a Pool Sessions song. The addition of this cover adds in a dash of country, singer-songwriter to the soup, giving the album its unparalleled well-roundedness.
Overall this album is a great introduction into Wolf Alice, I would highly recommend this as a first before moving on to their earlier stuff if you want to throw a new band into your playlist. Blue Weekend will satisfy all of your musical tastes, whether you’re a soft-rock connoisseur, a punk junky, or just an all-out alternative fan. I first heard them when they released the playlists for Forza Horizon 5 (there’s my car connection) and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Recommended songs: How Can I Make It Okay?, Smile, The Beach II, No Hard Feelings.
Catch James’s show, The Engine Block, an hour full of useless car information and general nonsense hosted by James Kelly and Colin Seeman.
I never thought I would like K-Pop. I was never a fan of boy bands (or girl bands for that matter), especially since One Direction dominated the music industry during my time in elementary and middle school. I was one of those kids that passionately disliked 1D and found the hysteria around them to be irritating. I didn’t understand why they were such a big deal to so many people. A few years later however, I found myself hearing some of their songs here and there. And, to my surprise…I kind of liked them. I picked up their albums, listened to more of their music, and soon realized that I had been too quick to judge them by their fanbase. I genuinely enjoyed their music and some of their songs are still buried in my playlists today. Looking back on this, I realize that my love of K-Pop came about similarly, in a funny twist of fate.
It was early June during the summer of 2021 and I was on my way home from a kayaking adventure on the lake with my sister. Like usual, she was driving while I got DJ duty. As I was trying to decide what to cue up, she suggested a new song she’d heard recently on the radio. That song was BTS’ Butter, which would later become the song of the summer, and also the song of our summer. I didn’t have any interest in K-Pop at the time, but like so many others that summer, I fell in love with the song immediately. And then I got a glimpse of the music video and my brain lit up faster than Christmas lights in December. Needless to say, we spent that entire evening on the couch watching it over and over again. I was dazzled by the colors, the sets, the intoxicating beat that would practically haunt my dreams for the best part of three months. And, unbeknownst to me, that was the start of something that soon became a passion.
In a way, K-Pop took me gently by the hand and said, “Let me show you something wonderful.” And, in a way, it also seized me by the collar and threw me in head first. Over the rest of the year, K-Pop has dominated so much of my life and headspace (probably more than I’d like to admit). But as I’ve come to know the genre and its nature and culture more fully, I’ve realized that, to those who find themselves immersed in it, K-Pop is a beautiful and complex form of art. It’s that artistic appeal that has made me, and likely many others, fall in love with it. Not to mention how incredibly gorgeous every single idol is (just stating the facts). In this article, I’ll be taking a closer look into K-Pop as a genre, but focusing specifically on the works of a few individual groups that I feel I have connected with the most so far.
Elements of K-Pop
I learned quickly that this genre has a very close relationship with visual media. K-Pop music videos are like the Hollywood blockbusters of the music industry. They’re cinematic and fantastical, with complex storylines and cliffhangers that leave you desperately wondering what happens next. Then you have performance videos, which are just as spectacular, from the sets to the fits. Regardless of whether or not the performance is live, every video is masterfully crafted, right down to the camera angles. It’s the colors, the untamed expression and creativity, the symbolism behind every element, the thrill of awaiting the unexpected thing that makes them so incredible. It’s visuals, music, and fantasy all rolled into one. Take TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s electrifying performance from the 2021 Melon Music Awards for example. The nearly ten minute sequence marries two of the group’s most popular tracks, 0X1=LOVESONG and LO$ER=LOVER, into a wintery, emotional storyline, complete with dazzling dance breaks and Taehyun’s gravelly vocals repeatedly stabbing me in the heart as usual. A rather dark ending leaves you wondering what TXT was trying to tell us with this performance.
One of the primary visuals in any K-Pop video is the element of dance. Until I discovered K-Pop, I wasn’t particularly a fan of dance. I admired it but didn’t feel any artistic connection to it. But seeing it in tandem with so many other art forms that I love taught me the beauty of contemporary dance as a form of expression. Dance has an incredible storytelling ability because it is always emotional and always passionate. It plays a huge role in capturing and characterizing the themes buried within the music.
Like the visuals of their videos, the lyrics and content of these songs are a huge source of inspiration for me. Reading the lyrics for K-Pop songs is a rather unique experience, seeing as you need to find English translations for them. Personally, I think it’s fun to listen to the songs and enjoy the music for what it is before diving into the lyrics. The words that make up these songs have always struck me for how raw and real they are. The messages that K-Pop songs convey are good ones. They are ones we need to hear more of. They speak of acceptance and self-love, encouragement to keep moving forward in a difficult world. So many songs also illustrate deeply personal inner feelings and experiences for the artists. When I read the lyrics to my favorite groups’ songs, I find myself understood perfectly by people I’ve never even met before. I can relate to so many feelings expressed within these songs, feelings I didn’t even fully know I had because I’ve never been able to put them into words in the ways that these artists can. It’s an incredibly validating experience. The lyrics are like poetry set to music, so beautifully and thoughtfully woven together, yet still full of emotional truth.
Themes
Like a lot of music, a common theme throughout K-Pop songs is love. But not just romantic love. These idols express a passionate desire for others to love themselves, as well as their own love for their fans and fellow group members. One of my favorite examples of the latter is BTS’ “Friends.” In this emotional duet, members Jimin and V speak of their struggles to get along during the early days of the group. The lyrics of the song relay their story, their scuffles, quirks and how their struggles blossomed into a close friendship. It’s a beautiful love song between two best friends, born a mere month and a half apart, who bonded so deeply that they now refer to each other as soulmates.
The writer in me comes alive at the metaphors constantly woven throughout the lyrics of these songs. Personally, I’m a sucker for a good metaphor, especially ones I can relate to. I think they are particularly beautiful in this context, for they express what we feel in a creative, poetic way. I never would have thought to compare happiness to ice cream the way that TXT does in their song, “Ice Cream.” They’re right though…it’s something everyone wants and sometimes it feels like it just melts away, no matter what you do. Or take BTS’ “Whalien 52”: the entire song is a metaphor centered around the 52-Hertz whale, a single whale that roams the Pacific ocean and whose calls resonate at a frequency of 52 hertz, higher than that of other whales that share its migration pattern. This creature has been dubbed the “loneliest whale in the world” because its calls are too high pitched for them to be heard by other whales. BTS takes this melancholy tale and crafts it into a metaphor for the human feelings of loneliness and the inability to be understood by others. Their lyrics speak of feelings of solidarity and alienation (hence the title “Whalien”) that we all experience at times.
The themes of many K-Pop songs also revolve around the idea of youth and the pains of growing up. This is likely one of the reasons why it resonates so deeply with young people. The songs are relatable because they are written by youth for youth. Idols use their own feelings and experiences as young adults to appeal to others around the world. In Stray Kids’ “Mixtape: Gone Days,” the artists express their frustration at the agonizing pressure and expectations that many youth experience from the older generations. In this song, they urge their seniors to see the world from their perspective, to accept new, original ideas and ways of life. They give a voice to the desire of the younger generation to make the world a better place and learn from the mistakes of the past.
K-Pop serves their fans well with an abundance of content. And one of the beauties of this content is its versatility and diversity. The duality in many of these groups is simply astounding. One minute, they write sweet songs about love and acceptance, creating the most touching, heartfelt videos to go along with them. Then, the next moment they turn around and shock us with the edgiest, most energetic songs and videos, like BTS’ “Not Today” or Stray Kids’ “Thunderous.” Quite a contrast to works like NCT Dream’s optimistic explosion of color, “Hello Future.”
My Perspective
I find it remarkable that something has made such an impact on my life in such a short period of time. K-Pop feels like the manifestation of everything I love as an artist, one of those things that feels like it was meant just for me. Perhaps I connected instantly because I found music, one of the things I love most in this world, coupled so beautifully with the other artforms that I love. These groups embody those things about me that I can’t put into words, those emotions that I feel and can’t express.
To me, there is one word that truly sums it all up… magic. These artists always find new ways to surprise us, to create something new, fresh, and extravagant in their music and performances. Just when you think a performance can’t be topped… that’s exactly what they come out and do. The beauty of this genre is that it’s both fantastical and realistic at the same time. You have to admit… there is something quite magical about watching Jungkook fly as he serenades an audience with “Euphoria” during BTS’ Love Yourself tour (I bet the videos, stunning as they are, don’t even do it justice).
I was introduced to K-Pop at the perfect time in my life. It added comfort and color to one of the most uncertain summers I’ve yet experienced, got me through several tough transitions, helped me connect with new people. It reminds me to be kind to myself, but to still push my own limits. It inspires me everyday in so many aspects of life and it brings out the artist in me. It’s a reminder of my love for music, for visual media, for words. And, when all else fails, it’s there to make me smile and give me a pick-me-up when I need it.
My love for this genre has grown since the summer, introducing me to so many new artists and groups along the way. But BTS is, and always will be, my first love in the realm of K-Pop. They never cease to impress me, not only through their incredible work, but also through their actions and personalities. Rarely do seven young men have so much power and influence in this world. And it’s even rarer to see them using it to spread a message of love and acceptance, of others and of ourselves. This is probably the thing I admire most about them. They’ve stolen my heart, just as they have so many millions of others’ and remind me of so many important lessons just by being who they are and sharing their music with the world:
They remind me that it’s ok to have bad days. Even when I don’t love myself, there is always someone out there who does (Magic Shop).
They remind me that I’m not the only one who feels lost sometimes (Lost).
They remind me to stop and appreciate the little things sometimes (Paradise).
They remind me not to worry so much and to live in the moment (So What).
They remind me that every day is a chance to start over (Zero O’Clock).
They remind me that I need not be afraid to spread my wings and fly (Outro: Wings).
I’m sure I could ramble on about K-Pop for another couple of pages but if there’s one thing I hope you take away from this: it is that music and art know no boundaries – not even language barriers. And I hope this gives you a little encouragement to try something new. Like I’ve learned, inspiration can come from the very place where you least expect it.
