Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Hello and welcome to Let’s Discuss, another feature I made up in five minutes because I figured out it allows me to be lazy by taking discussions already happening on the site and on social media and utilizing it for my own benefit.
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Anyway, as you may have noticed, the popular discourse at the moment revolves around LE SSERAFIM’s encore stages. Not only are people getting heated about them specifically, but more importantly, both on here and on social media, people are using them as a catalyst to talk about the supposed decline in standout vocalists, vocal standards, live performances, or all of that and more.
In particular, I responded to this one TikTok posted on Twitter, saying basically that vocal ability has rarely had much to do with popularity in K-pop, among other things.
Awjsjsjskksks no wonder none of these groups can sing
— bia ✴︎ (@biasauurus) March 3, 2024
pic.twitter.com/QCMnR3Uk3D
Vocals can make a song better, sure, but a ton of the biggest songs in K-pop history are not vocally demanding. Things have always been production/topline heavy, which is why the producers become famous.
— Asian Junkie (@asianjunkiecom) March 3, 2024
Fact is people don't have the same passion to support groups above whatever standard they have as much as they do complaining on social media or dragging other groups. I find it unlikely companies care unless there's monetary rewards/punishment for doing so.
— Asian Junkie (@asianjunkiecom) March 3, 2024
Like the people who got dragged the most were also from popular groups and it largely didn't impact much, so.
— Asian Junkie (@asianjunkiecom) March 4, 2024
But what got me thinking about different topics related to all this discourse was a reply from our very own Ells cutting past all the stuff about the realities of the industry and getting things back on track to the vocal aspect of this.
I think this is the more interesting question, yeah. I think the industry expansion has spread the talent around, and the reaction is basically about extremely popular groups not having the one or two marquee vocalists they're used to. https://t.co/s6pf3iilqe
— Asian Junkie (@asianjunkiecom) March 4, 2024
Probably a deeper discussion, but I wouldn't be surprised if the bigger companies haven't basically Moneyball'd what actually works, and figured out another visual/dancer is more profitable than a standout vocalist. Which, again, would reflect on the audience at large.
— Asian Junkie (@asianjunkiecom) March 4, 2024
Yeah, streaming has changed the calculus, IMO. The risk is if people don't show up for concerts, but that doesn't seem to be a problem from what I've seen. They largely don't care yet. https://t.co/EWCExmNlE8
— Asian Junkie (@asianjunkiecom) March 4, 2024
So from what I can gather, the discussion is about:
- How much should fans care about idol vocals? Do they actually care?
- Should idols need to be able to sing? If so, to what level do you expect?
- Has there actually been a decline in vocal talent in K-pop?
As far as my thoughts, I’ve basically answered all of those in my tweets, but was curious to see what everybody else’s thoughts were since it’s one of the few topics I saw that actually got a pretty wide-range in opinions.
