Why, Joelle, why?!

This December marks my 1 year anniversary of my K-pop obsessiveness. Yup, I've been stuck in my Korean "world" for a whole year. You want to know how it all started? Well if you don't, too bad. I'm going to tell it anyways...

It all started with a single music video. Big Bang's "Lies" mv to be exact. My friend Sam "Panda" showed it to me. He's a 24-year-old bboy, mind you, so it must have been worthy of his manliness and rep for him to show it to me. So I watched it, and even though I couldn't understand what they were singing, I was hooked by the storytelling and catchiness of the song and the odd appeal of these foreign Asian boys. (I say "odd" because of Seungri's semi-bleached hair and the "hip-hop" clothes that I hadn't gotten used to yet.) Plus, it wasn't the kind of music video where the artist sings to the camera while some almost-naked girls bodyroll around them.

So the music video sparked my interest and I went on a massive search for more of their videos to see if they were as good as "Lies". Hello, "Haru Haru"! Just as good. Their "tough-guy" image was growing on me. (My previous thoughts about K-pop were that all the guys were super girly looking.) And so after that, the snowball effect ran its course and I had completely fallen in love with Big Bang.

They can sing & dance at the same time. Full routines. None of that "sing and stand, maybe sway and bob up & down a little while the back up dancers do all the impressive choreography" that I'm used to from American artists. I like to dance, I want to see more of it.

So in general, my obsessiveness with K-pop groups includes:
1. Familiarizing myself with all the members
2. Watching all the music videos
3. Watch at least one live performance of each song
4. Watch all the subbed TV shows/interviews/radio broadcasts/etc. they were in
(Random tidbit: Korean radio shows are video taped and broadcasted alongside the radio airing so you can see what's going on inside the studio. Pretty dang awesome!)
5. Figure out the dances to the songs

And so that is how the K-pop obsession began. Next came 2NE1, 2PM, 2AM, and very recently (like, "this week" recent) SHINee. But I will explain each one in separate entries.

Go rest your eyes. That was a long one. (That's what she said.)