In the past month, Korean pop outfits 2NE1 and Wonder Girls both called it quits. Those announcements came after a few other notable breakups in the world of K-Pop, and after months that saw the landscape of Korean music shift in a new way. It happened a while back, but January felt like it was…
How, exactly, do you take the reigns back on things you can’t control? Or, less flowery — how do you reclaim your narrative? Your view might vary, but I think it’s fair to say Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has been perceived to be treading water since she released her last album. Key word is “perceived,” as…
Two ways to look at “Mille-Feuille:” 1. Tokyo Girls’ Style have long been one of the early adopters to new styles within the idol realm. Since they were created by Avex as a way to get in on the then-burgeoning idol scene, whooshed in by the success of AKB48. They started out right around the…
Ambition is a hell of a thing, but certain artists just really need to chase it. Daoko built her reputation on mystery — she was a wise-beyond-her-years high school rapper who never showed her face and took Sotaisei Riron’s tone of a teenager scribbling personal poetry during a boring math class and applied it to…
The internet, as I’m sure you don’t need me telling you, warps our worldview pretty fiercely. If you follow a bunch of people on a social media site who share a common interest, it probably looks like any news about said interest is a big deal that practically stops time. In reality, most people are…