The author | Maureena
Editor| Li Chunhui
After six years, Korean movies have once again landed in Chinese theaters. Never mind how miserable the box office of "Oh, Wen Ji" was (less than 2 million in the week of release), it was a test of the water anyway. Everyone believes that the "Korean Restriction Order" is really lifted this time, and the meaning is also there.
Spring River plumbing can be seen everywhere. In 2020, due to changes in Sino-Korean relations, Korean artists were once restricted from publishing content on Chinese social media. South Korean artists could not post Weibo last year, which was also confirmed by singer Huang Zhilie's answer to fan questions. In November this year, the Function of South Korean Artists Posting Weibo was restored, and Oba oni collectively poured into Weibo for business. South Korean celebrity hot searches have surged again, and I believe that everyone has more or less feelings.
The topic of lifting the ban on the "Korean restriction order" in these two years is almost comparable to "the wolf is coming", and it must be mentioned from time to time. This time it really came, and the situation was very calm. Leaving aside the increasingly antagonistic folk sentiments of the two countries and the rapidly growing idol industry of internal entertainment, in the six years that Limited Korea, Korean entertainment began to attack the European and American markets and gained quite a lot. But for us, this product is quite wrong. If you want to return to China, I am afraid that you have to exchange the sweet and sour meat back into pot wrapped meat.
From "toxic" to "spicy ears"
The dazzling stage, excellent business ability, eye-catching handsome men and women and catchy melodies are the reasons why the Hallyu attracted many heavenly rice into the pit that year. But today's Hallyu, the product direction has been very different.
About two months ago, Aespa, a new girl group under south Korean SM and a concept girl group founded in 2020, released a mini album "Savage". As an "old friend of the Chinese people", The attention of its new group in China has always been higher than that of other Korean groups, and the news of aespa's new special has successfully rushed to Weibo's hot search, but the relevant discussion is mostly "aespa new songs are ugly".
This is not the first time AESPA has "spicy" the ears of the people of the Celestial Dynasty. Since its debut, the songs of this concept girl group have been inseparable from the word "ugly", and the only "Yangjian Song" is still a cover of the single "Forever" by producer Yu Yongzhen in 2000.
This scene inevitably makes the old Han fan look back at the past. You know, SM has always had the name of "Divine Comedy Manufacturing Machine", from "Candy" and "Hope" in the last century to "Sorry Sorry" and "Gee" in 2009, etc. The melody is on the top as soon as it is heard, which is the symbol of SM's group.
"Ugly" is not a problem with the SM family, but that korean music as a whole has become "hot ears". YG's girl group BLACKPINK began solo operations for each member after the release of the group in October last year. Among them, Lisa is the most popular person overseas, and the attention of personal solo is also the highest. But after the new song was released, many Tianchao rice bluntly said that they were disappointed, "Just this? ”
The so-called "ugly", the root of it, is that the Korean group songs now show a "collage" trend - the main song, chorus, and climax of a song have nothing to do with each other, and it is also reasonable to directly split into three songs.
Collage makes the song fluency decrease, and the listener has not yet grasped the melody memory point and has already turned to the next part, which is really difficult for people who are accustomed to listening to the melody of the K-pop poisoning to accept and digest. In 2013, the main song of the regular fourth series of Girls' Generation, "I got a boy", was a typical collage, but there was no trend in the Korean market at that time, and it was not like the current large company combinations could not keep up with the times without making a few collages.
Even if the song "Spicy Ears" is gone, the "business ability" that Han Rice is most proud of is no longer pure. In my draft, the mentors who went to Korea to work recall that most of them would mention that they sang and danced in the practice room without white or black, just to present the best opening scene on the singing stage. Because of this, "Kaimai Singing and Dancing" was once regarded as an essential ability to love beans, and domestic idol programs also used "full open wheat" as a selling point.
However, South Korea itself has long changed. The more common the combination of mouth performances in the song program, the more large company-born artists, the more habitual mouth performances, even if the opening of the wheat is indispensable to a large number of pads.
Some Korean netizens counted the opening of artists from SM, JYP and YG in 2020-2021, among which aespa and powder ink actually achieved the "achievement" of zero opening wheat on the spot. Only JYP still adheres to idol ethics, and the opening rate of the new girl group ITY is as high as 100%.
Not only is it getting lazier and lazier to open its mouth to sing, but the dance ability of the new Korean group seems to have declined compared to its predecessors. Taking the women's group as an example, 2007-2009 was known as the "second generation of Korean girl group prosperity", dozens of women's groups of large and small companies fought in the melee, wearing high heels and dancing the women's group dance is just the basic exercise. But nowadays, the new girl group has rarely stepped on the tall to keep up with the stage, and even jumping together has become a luxury.
The new Korean group under the Western aesthetic
Interestingly, even the professional ethics of Kaimai singing and dancing have been left behind by the new Korean groups, the market performance is not bad, and the results of going to sea are also very eye-catching.
Needless to say, the four generations of South Korean women's groups went to sea first, and the solo performance of several members can also be remarkable. "Lalisa", which I angrily scolded at fans for "YG does not do people", lacked the stamina on the list, but the English song "Money" has helped Lisa find the field.
South Korea attacked the most successful combination in the European and American markets - BTS, in recent years, new songs in the Chinese market have also been repeatedly questioned "ugly", and even some netizens said that it is not a good thing to give the creative authority to the members, the members of the creation is too artistic and ignore the degree of singing, hoping that the company will intervene appropriately. But "ugly" did not prevent BTS from attacking the European and American markets, and at the end of last year, BTS was nominated by the Grammys, although it did not win the award, it can also be regarded as the highlight moment of the K-pop attack on the United States.
There are also AESPA, which broke negative news about members before its debut, coupled with the strong sense of single collage and criticized by Chinese fans, this girl group has a very good momentum of development in South Korea this year, taking advantage of the fact that the pink ink members solo and twice entered a weak period to quickly "take the position". "Savage" frequently won one, breaking the first sales record of the Korean five-generation girl group, and was invited to star in the American late-night talk show "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah", which is also the first time that a K-pop artist has appeared on the show.
Throughout the three decades of Korean entertainment, making toxic songs has not been difficult for Korean companies. Songs are becoming more and more difficult to hear, and even abandon the traditional artistic ability of "opening wheat singing and dancing" is because korean entertainment now caters to the European and American markets.
How did BTS return home in Europe and the United States when it was a Korean little paste? On the one hand, thanks to BigHit's keen capture of the importance of social media in the relationship between stars and fans, it has registered overseas social platforms for BTS members in a timely manner, regularly updated materials, released self-made variety shows, etc., making up for the low exposure of the gap period of activities, making the relationship between star fans more reliable.
On the other hand, unlike the K-pop group in the past, where professional producers compose lyrics and compose music, and members are only responsible for interpretation, BTS is fully involved in the production of albums, from songwriting and dance to creativity, reflecting the ideas of the members, and the whole group and each album revolve around the overall concept. In other words, the song, the stage and the love beans are no longer three pieces that are divided, but a whole, a whole that serves the concept of "BTS".
Since being blocked in the Chinese market, Hallyu, especially large Korean companies, has taken the European and American markets as a new target. In the birthplace of world pop, audiences want to see innovation, and "concept" is more important than "good sound". Because of this, starting in 2020, Korean entertainment companies began to pay more attention to the "overall concept" of the combination.
The media environmentalist Walter Weng once said, "Vision is anatomical perception, and hearing is integrated perception." The difference between vision and hearing makes people pursue consistent "invigorating pleasure" when listening to songs. Today's Hallyu chooses to sacrifice part of the auditory experience to serve the overall visual effects of the stage, and the "visual center" theory has arisen in the Hallyu circle.
Take former Izone members Zhang Yuanying and An Youzhen's new girl group I, for example. After the release of the group's first single "ELEVEN", almost all the netizens who listened quickly were scolding the company, saying that the "Indian Divine Comedy" and "the slow release in the middle are unknown". However, after the release of the song stage, it was still this group of netizens who reproduced the "true fragrance" scene and watched the loop until it could not stop.
A few slightly weird places in the original song are organically combined with stage performances under the influence of stage visual effects, choreography and killing part. In particular, the so-called "slow-moving" part, placed in the stage context with the dance, can be seen, which is to show that the girl in the lyrics has a "blossoming heart" mood change because of love.
At present, the development of European and American pop music presents a trend of visual overperforming hearing, and in the complete stage, "sound" and "dance" become performance elements, and "kaimai singing and dancing" becomes less important. But this is obviously not in line with the aesthetic taste and media environment of the Chinese market.
No more betting on the Chinese market
Limited to Six Years in South Korea, Korean entertainment companies have also undergone a change in seats due to the depth of entanglement with the Chinese market.
On November 19, CJENM acquired the shares of Lee So-man, the chief producer of SM Entertainment, for 630 billion won, and Uncle Man will still serve as an artist producer under SM in the future, but the boss has become a worker, which makes many old Korean rice sigh. SM company, also counted as China, defeat also China.
In the 1990s, SM, JYP and DSP were three-legged entertainment companies that came together with THE CREATION, Crystal Boy, FinKL and other ancestral combinations for the "first three eras". After entering the millennium, the DSP who is engaged in the real estate and jewelry business has gradually fallen behind after experiencing internal friction such as the change of president and the departure of members. Singer Yang Hyun-sook (Leung Hyun-suk) founded the YG Supplement, together with SM and JYP, called the "Post-Three Eras".
Among the three major companies, Li Xiuman was the first to feel the call of mission in the Chinese market. Probably because the hard-to-find scene of the HOT Beijing concert made Uncle Man unforgettable for a long time, Han Geng, who received trainee training in South Korea, became the first Chun Chinese to debut in Korea (Bai Xue, a member of the Crispe group who debuted in 1998, is of Mixed Chinese and Japanese descent).
Due to the simple psychology of "Chinese help Chinese", many non-Korean fans have entered the pit because they want to support this young man who works hard in a foreign country, contributing a lot of sales to SM. SM, who tasted the sweetness, further bet on China, Song Qian became the first Chinese captain of the Korean group, and brushed the face of many Koreans; EXO, who debuted in 2012, has a Chinese membership ratio of 1/3, and there is a Heavenly Dynasty squad dedicated to the Chinese market and singing Chinese songs; NCT, which does not have a maximum membership limit, also has a number of Chinese members.
But with the rise of The Korean-restricted and Chinese local idol industries, Li Xiuman's China route suffered Waterloo. The influence of NCT and Vixen V is mostly limited to sm family meals. Although Ning Ning, the lead singer in the new girl group, is from northeast China, she has not received much attention from her Fellow Chinese compatriots.
Sm, which lost the Chinese market, has been very unsatisfactory in recent years, except for Aespa, which has just improved, and other combinations are always in arrears from the big red. EXO, known as the "Last King", is experiencing the internal troubles of the members' successive enlistment, as well as the internal troubles of the members' marriage and the brother's transformation into a grandfather.
The crisis is directly reflected in stock prices. The Korea Stock Exchange announced on May 4 that sm entertainment and YG entertainment have been downgraded from blue-chip companies to ordinary medium-sized companies due to poor performance and increased equity losses.
2020 was SM's darkest hour, with a net loss of 80.3 billion won. Neither can it rely on domestic fans to survive like the JYP that sticks to the locality; nor can it learn to enter YG in Europe and the United States, and there is a return from overseas markets. As for the downgrade of YG, it is related to the chain reaction of the Lee Victory incident that led to a sharp decline in net profit and ROE.
In contrast, the successful big Hit in Europe and the United States is the spring breeze, which is busy acquiring small companies to consolidate the moat. Although Big Hit has the problem of relying too much on BTS, it does not prevent its momentum of impacting towards the new "big three".
With the sharp contrast between the development status of SM and Big Hit, many companies in South Korea have begun to actively cater to the aesthetics and political correctness of Europe and the United States. For example, DR Music's girl group Black Swan, also a multinational group, did not choose Asian members, but found a Brazilian girl and a Belgian black girl, with two Korean members to debut in a group. The group is popular in Belgium and is interviewed by local news programs.
Hanxing has been separated from the Chinese market for six years, and both the direction of Korea's own star-making and my aesthetic taste towards the public have gradually drifted away. Korean entertainment has changed from the past "popular symbol" to a "niche circle hobby", and those days of chasing Korean dramas, chasing Korean stars, screaming and shouting for Obahuni, just like the short years of youth, are difficult to return.