(Clockwise) Silica Gel, Lucy, Touched, YUDABINBAND, Jannabi, Crying Nut, Band Nah Photos: Taemin Ha/Magic Strawberry Sound; MYSTIC STORY; MPMG MUSIC; MPMG MUSIC; PEPONI MUSIC; courtesy of the artist; January

Given K-pop’s global reach and explosive popularity in recent years, you’d be forgiven if you thought that girl groups and boy bands were the totality of South Korean popular music. But just like the U.S. (and many other countries), Korea boasts a plethora of music genres that are widely enjoyed — including rock. 

South Korea has a rich history with rock that dates back to the 1950s, when American military bases throughout the country played Western music on the radio and invited local musicians like Shin Joong-hyun — known as the "Godfather of Korean Rock"—to perform for them. Shin founded many rock bands, including Add4 (one of Korea’s first rock bands) and produced psychedelic hits for artists like Pearl Sisters, Kim Choo-ja and Kim Jung-mi. 

Countless Korean rock bands appeared between the mid-1960s and 1980s, with a few of the most notable ones being He6, Sanullim, Deulgukhwa, Songgolmae and Boohwal. The mid to late ‘90s saw the emergence of an indie rock scene in Korea, thanks to pioneering groups like Crying Nut, No Brain, Pippi Band, Deli Spice and others. Later bands like Kiha & the Faces, Nell and Hyukoh helped keep K-indie rock alive through the 2000s and 2010s, and are now some of the most respected and renowned artists in Korean music history.

< CRYING NUT >

It’d probably be impossible to overstate the impact of these living legends on Korean rock. Crying Nut helped establish Korea’s indie music scene in the mid 1990s and are one of the founding fathers of Korean punk (known as "Joseon punk"). 

In 1996 they and fellow K-indie pioneers Yellow Kitchen jointly released Our Nation Vol. 1 — Korea’s first indie rock album. Two years later, Crying Nut's came out with their self-titled full-length album, which contained their smash hit "Speed Up Losers." The album sold over 100,000 copies and became the first successful album by a Korean indie act. 

Their stunning achievement proved that an artist didn’t need to be signed to a major label to make it big and paved the way for other Korean artists to put out independent records, thereby further fostering the growth of Korea’s indie scene.   

In the decades since their formation in 1993, Crying Nut — whose members include Park Yoon-sik (vocals, guitar), Lee Sang-hyuk (drums), Han Kyung-rok (bass), Kim In-soo (accordion, keyboard) and Lee Sang-myun (guitar) — have performed in numerous countries; they have performed at SXSW twice and headlined Lincoln Center’s K-indie Music Night last year.

https://www.grammy.com/news
By Regina Kim

Featured Artist : Crying Nut

Illustration by Glenn Harvey

// EXCERPT //

Many modern fandoms are now doggedly fixated on — and vocally competitive about — commercial statistics. K-pop fans appear especially effective at organizing around achieving specific chart goals. “When K-pop came in, it was like nothing that any chart-juicing machine had ever done before,” according to the former Spotify employee. “Just on a completely different scale and level.”

Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based artist and label services agency, says that, “for many K-pop acts, measuring ‘success’ has become a straight up numbers game.” He compares the “massive mobilization of top tier K-pop fan-clubs” to “the impressive precision of an elite military operation.” 

This mobilization process can also resemble a music-industry version of the political action committees (PACs) that draw scrutiny in the U.S. every election year. Fans often raise money online to buy extra copies of albums or singles and then disburse the cash among other fans to make those purchases, usually with the explicitly stated goal of pushing a release up the chart. These groups routinely tweet that they have amassed pools of tens of thousands of dollars at a time.

https://www.billboard.com/pro
By Elias Leight

Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]

Huening Kai, Soobin, Taehyun, Yeonjun & Beomgyu of Tomorrow X Together @ Lollapalooza [Chicago Grant Park 2023.08.23]. Josh Brasted/FilmMagic

// EXCERPT 1 // 

A decade ago, if you wanted to see your favorite K-pop act in concert, you probably had to travel to New York or Los Angeles to catch a rare U.S. appearance. At arena shows and the now-popular KCON festival, acts like BIGBANG and EXO were “doing insane numbers, but they were considered outsiders or outliers,” says Bernie Cho, president of DFSB Kollective, a Seoul-based artist and label services agency. “A lot of these K-Pop tours were dismissed as being extremely niche; but to me K-pop was like the Grateful Dead.” 

“It turns out,” adds Cho, “the new Asian market is Caucasian.” 

Since BTS broke into the U.S. mainstream in 2017, followed by a wave of other K-pop chart-topping successes from such acts as SuperM, Stray Kids, BLACKPINK, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and, most recently, NewJeans, new touring opportunities are opening up and driving gigs — and business — to more markets across the United States. 

// EXCERPT 2 // 

K-pop U.S. tour legs are getting longer, too. Whereas they once averaged two to four shows in major markets, tours now average between eight and 12 shows in major and secondary markets, with many artists playing multiple nights in one city. In 2022 and 2023, K-pop artists SUGA/Agust D, TWICE, Stray Kids, SEVENTEEN and TOMORROW X TOGETHER all launched arena and stadium tours that collectively hit such cities as New York, L.A. Atlanta, Seattle, Charlotte, Washington D.C., Houston, Fort Worth, Chicago, Oakland and Toronto. This fall, HYBE act ENHYPEN has scheduled arena gigs in Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Glendale, Ariz., among other cities. 

Cho says data analytics tools like Chartmetric — which identifies artists’ streaming, social media and audience data by factors including location, gender, ethnicity and age — have proven especially helpful for artist teams to discover new fanbases while determining routing. He cites a sold-out Epik High show in April at a 3,000-capacity venue in Salt Lake City — typically considered a relatively sleepy B-level market — as an example of such data helping K-pop artists locate fans.  

Many Korean labels and management companies are also currently paying to send their emerging acts to the United States in hopes of breaking them here before Asia, given the prestige fostered by making it in North America. “BTS demonstrated that formula,” says Janet Kim, “where they may not have been the biggest artists in Korea when first starting out, but they spent time and money coming to the U.S. and building their fan base and have done very well for themselves.” 

“If an act can successfully do a U.S. tour, that leads to a world tour,” adds Cho. “It’s validation they’re going to have longevity and, hopefully, a legacy.”

While KCON has served as a Stateside launching pad for K-pop acts over the past decade, now their management companies and agents are eying marquee festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza and Governor’s Ball as crowning crossover achievements. Given that such shows put artists in front of huge crowds, they’re also major opportunities for fanbase development. 

// EXCERPT 3 // 

It’s a formula that worked for BLACKPINK, who in 2019 became the first K-pop girl group to ever play Coachella. Four years and a global pandemic later, the group headlined the 2023 edition last April. This summer, aespa made history as the first K-pop act to play Governor’s Ball and Outside Lands. After playing Lollapalooza for the first time in 2022, TOMORROW X TOGETHER headlined the festival earlier this month, when NewJeans made its Lollapalooza debut. (This appearance was NewJeans’ first U.S. festival performance, an achievement that happened the same week the group landed its first No. 1 — not to mention its first entry — on the Billboard 200 albums chart with its sophomore EP, Get Up.) 

“Festival plays have really helped elevate credibility and the clout that K-pop has arrived,” says Cho. “It’s not just through grinding on tours no one knows about. Having big acts and emerging artists play festivals has really been helpful in landing K-pop as something less foreign and more fun.” 

All the sources interviewed for this story said they predict K-pop will continue to grow in the United States. Supporting this, Ellen Kim at Subkulture says that younger fans are more open to non-English content than previous generations, while UTA’s Janet Kim says she’s seen a growing number of labels and A&R executives looking to take on K-pop projects. The HYBE rep says, too, that the many subgenres of K-pop represent pure potential, with these currently “untapped areas” likely to attract even more fans.

https://www.billboard.com/pro
By Katie Bain

Featured Commentator : Bernie Cho [DFSB Kollective]

Photo illustration by Griffin Lotz. Photographs in illustration by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images; John Shearer/Getty Images; Ten Asia/Multi-Bits/Getty Images, 2; Marco Del Grande/The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media/Getty Images

Thus was born a multi-billion-dollar industry, now embraced globally across generations and cultures. K-pop’s enormous success is still predominantly fueled by the enthusiasm of teens and young adults, passionate devotees who look to their idols for belonging and inspiration. Though K-pop boldly mashes together genres from all over the world (sparking its fair share of conversations about the ethics of appropriation), it has still maintained its distinctly Korean ethos. It’s a culture that values the collective, looks toward innovation, and is highly attuned to emotions — resulting in cutting-edge songs and performances that explode with feeling, yet are accessible to a mass audience. 

What truly binds the industry now is its perfection-honing training system and emphasis on highly conceptual multimedia storytelling. That industry has birthed two of the world’s most influential and bestselling artists today, BTS and Blackpink, and its powerhouse labels (like Hybe, SM, and YG) have proved remarkably consistent in creating new stars. Yet as more artists of non-Korean citizenship and ancestry have risen as “K-pop” stars in recent years, the label is being questioned by some critics and fans who see it as a tool to pigeonhole artists from being recognized on a broader scale. Even BTS leader RM told Rolling Stone in his May 2021 cover story that he sees the group as existing outside of K-pop: “Our genre is just BTS,” he said. “That debate [between whether BTS is K-pop or pop] is very important for the music industry, but it doesn’t mean very much for us members.”

Long before these Hallyu stars, plenty of homegrown artists paved the way for K-pop’s popularity and eclecticism. Our list of 100 Greatest Songs in the History of Korean Pop Music was led by Rolling Stone contributor Michelle Hyun Kim and crafted by a panel of music journalists and critics, both based in South Korea and the United States, who have been writing about Korean music for years. After an initial ballot vote and series of heated debates, we arrived at a list that looked beyond the strict definition of K-pop as a hitmaking business in order to tell the broader history of Korean popular music. 

The earliest entry on the list dates back to the 1920s, an era when recordings captured burgeoning artists living under Japanese occupation singing Korean lyrics atop songs from Europe or Japan. From there, the list spotlights artists throughout the 20th century who were the “idols” of their day, making folk protest anthems, ballads of mourning and change, as well as trot — a form of Korean popular music that derives from traditional Korean music, Japanese enka, and American and European ballads. 

Elsewhere, there are trailblazing experimentalists and indie crossover artists whose early adoption of funk, pop, soul, and rock helped establish mainstream familiarity with those sounds. Then, the story catches up with K-pop proper in the Nineties, as we celebrate the biggest and most ingenious hits that were either musically groundbreaking, or influential to how K-pop is marketed and consumed. 

What follows is not only the story of Korean popular music, and how it birthed the K-pop business, but also how a small peninsula nation learned how to make art in the face of colonialism and political change, culled sonics from all corners of the globe, and keeps striving to find new ways of distilling the purest, most thrilling aspects of the human experience into four-minute packages of pop revelation.

Hear this playlist on Spotify.

#55 DJ DOC 'Run to You'
2000


Choi Soo-Young/Multi-Bits/Getty ImagesIn the Nineties, DJ Doc was essential to the development of Korean hip-hop, frequently fighting airplay bans for decrying social injustice and censorship in the entertainment industry. Still active today, the trio defined the sound of the Y2K era with their funky party anthems, especially the Boney M.-sampling “Run to You.” Part euphemistic love call, part quick-fire rap rejoinder, “Run to You” has become a timeless hit, iconic for its come-hither “Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!“ shout-out section — that’s become a must at noraebang karaoke. —T.H.