Korean pop group Girls’ Generation – also known as Shoujo Jidai (少女時代, or Shōjo Jidai) in Japan – are featured on August issue of Japanese Sky magazine…
The girls are set to make their official J-pop debut next month, and they’ll not be the only Korean girl group to do so. Kara has already had a special gig in February, while 4minute has just kicked off their promotion in Japan. Others like Brown Eyed Girls and After School etc. are going to try their luck too in coming months.
It’s going to be an interesting to see if these K-pop girl groups could rival their J-pop counterparts e.g. Perfume, Momusu and AKB48 etc. They do have the talent, so it’s more of a cultural matter that decides their fate.
SNSD series – Previous: YoonA S-oil wallpapers | Next: Japan Genie concept
Snippet: SNSD and Super Junior @ SPAO August 2010 wallpaper
[...] Source: Yeinjee [...]
I know some are saying KPOP artist should not rehash their KPOP songs in Japanese, but the whole reason debut in the Japanese music market is for them to market themselves as KPOP music artist. I think its fine to remake KPOP songs to Japanese for Japanese market…that’s the whole point. We don’t need SNSD singing JPOP songs in Japan.
It’s not an issue at all to reuse the music (especially for their debut album), but they should be a bit more inventive with the lyrics.
What I see is that they are simply translating the Korean lyrics into Japanese… if wouldn’t be a problem if the translations sound nice, but it’s not the case unfortunately, it’s awkward.
Also, would be nice to make new MVs too. The lips just won’t match if using the same old MV for two different languages.
Take “Gee” for example, the mass popularity of the song will limit what the lyrics can be translated into. It will have to carry the magic of the song over to Japanese, and since the song was so familiar in its original language it will sound weird in Japanese no matter how inventive the lyrics are.
Re-shooting the music video may be one of key to bringing freshness into the newly translated song since die-hard KPOP fans in Japan probably have seen the Korean version of the music video.
That’s probably one of the issues that some fans are shouting about… that instead of spoiling a popular song by forcing in the translation, why not make some new songs instead?
I absolutely agree. The songs many times sound worse, take abracadabra by Beg it sounds strange in japanese and I love the original.
The groups would need japanese song writers like DBSK but I don’t think they will use that route.
I believe the pv is exactly the same as the korean Gee video judging from the released pics.
Another issue people are complaining about is the language ability, many of these groups have a very limited or non japanese ability at all.
In SNSD only Sooyoung speaks japanese fluently. In Kara and 4minute basically it’s non at all.
Big bang has also got criticism because only one member has mastered the language.
The language issue shouldn’t be serious problem for the ‘new’ groups. I mean, it would be a shame if the artists still couldn’t speak proper Japanese after a year or two in the J-pop market, but most people won’t be too harsh to the newbies.
That’s true even though Big Bang has been active in Japan over a year and still only one member can speak it.
I think the problem will be trying to compete with the japanese girlgroups, we have AKB48 and Momusu with all the subunits as well as Perfume etc. AKB48 are quite raunchy in their PV’s (the newest one consists of the girls in lingerie and kissing each other )SNSD and Kara are the only ones to compete but their style is more momusu though.
But I don’t think the groups will be in any of the major shows like Heyx3, Music station,Music Japan or smapxSmap any time soon.
DBSK and Boa worker really hard to become successful in Japan.
I think the bigger challenge is whether the Japanese are ready to embrace the Korean style. The Korean girl groups are so much different than the popular Japanese girl groups, so the question is whether the Japanese market will like the Korean ways or not to begin with.
As you said the Japanese girls can get pretty raunchy sometimes, but it’s quite a norm in their point of view… and I can’t see any Korean groups willing to go that far. The Korean girls will have no problem competing in terms of looks and talents though.
As for the major shows it will depend on which Japanese company the K-groups are working with. If they are with major labels like Avex they should have no problem getting on the big shows.
That’s absolutely true.
The korean style with girl and boygroups are completely different
if you compare them.
Female singers are more the same I would say with some artists like Kumi Koda and Hyori.
None of the new artists will be under Avex, SM and Avex severed their ties after the bosses decided to keep 3 out of 5 of the former DBSK under their artists.
I believe they all are under Universal who does not do a very good job promoting their artists, the korean group The Grace or Tenjoshiki was under that label and even if they worked for years in Japan never breaking it.
It will be a lot tougher if their Japanese affiliate is not influential enough.
The one clever thing is that the groups are going to Japan almost simultaneously; it creates a buzz which the Japanese press and shows can’t simply ignore.
i don’t know about the others, but kara’s japanese not too bad. gyuri can speak without translator, seungyeon close to that. the other three are still learning, but i can see that they are seriously learning how to speak the language.
Wow kind of off topic but I just saw AK48′s soft porn PV, Heavy Rotation. Man it was hard to watch. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with watching scantly clad women, but to see these idol girl group singing and prancing around in lingerie with lesbian theme was hard to watch. Is Japan desperately using lesbian tone to sell music, or is this is a beginning of a bad trend?
Lesbian theme is not new in J-pop, not common but certainly not something unusual; and I don’t think it’s going to be a trend or something.
The PV is rather cheap, needless sexualisation, but it works well in Japan.
no matter how hard jpop fans try to convince people that jpop is talent over image, it always fires back because, let’s be honest, it’s not.
most girl groups and boy groups are all image over talents which are optional. the stars get into tons and tons of drug and sex scandals, and all the media really cares about are scantily clad 6-16 year olds.
it’s sick.
i know for a fact most korean groups in the top always put in 101% effort, like kara and snsd. they’ll never give up, even though they both have hard-to-manage schedules.
SNSD is translating genie and making a new 3D mv. it will be released next month.
btw, avex is not a good label…dbsk had to promote themselves at a market because they weren’t known enough for avex to give them big promotions. they literally stood in markets singing. after they were recognized THEN avex went crazy for them. so far i think SNSD is doing quite well? they didn’t debut yet but they’re already in magazines, blogs and tv show cameos.
watching heavy rotation; wtf is this shit?
lovejunkiee… being biased is one thing, but you are being ignorant here.
Both J-pop and K-pop have their own fans, and music is really a matter of personal preferences instead of who better than who.
J-pop artists are not far worse than K-pop when it comes to drug/sex scandals. Korean artists have had similar issues of late.
The lolipop (young teens) is one issue to be concerned, that I won’t disagree. But if you think it’s all the media cares about then obviously you haven’t read enough about J-pop news.
It’s debatable whether Avex is good or not depending on how you see it. They are the most influential in Japan, but due to their large number of artists they might not pay as much attention to the newcomers.
SNSD and KARA seem to be doing reasonably well.
Like it or not, AKB48 (singers of Heavy Rotation) is the best selling female pop group. Bottomline is, their style works… on contrary there’s no guarantee that the most popular K-pop songs could be as popular in Japan.
Different people, different culture, different preferences. See it with an open mind my dear.
Yeeee Taeyeon and Yuri and Jessica!
Though I wish they’d get a new single instead of simply translating their Kpop songs into Japanese…