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.
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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…