BTS are just one instance of the boy-and-girl bands that the Korean music industry is producing with alarming consistency. K-Pop, short for Korean Pop, is the genre that these groups are often relegated to, but that’s reductive to only the region of their work. Western musical stylings like hip-hop,
The bands are generally composed of a small crowd of vocalists — seriously, these groups can have upwards of a dozen singers — who typically develop international followings, in a group setting as well as individually. Generally, the acts are composed of one sex, but that’s not a steadfast rule. But, for fans of K-pop, the acts typically have a bubblegum-quality, comparable to an updated version of the American pop music of the aughts.
As streaming services have become more popular, the charts have shifted to favor hip-hop and rap more than radio-friendly pop music. K-Pop fuses all of these conflicting genres into one, ever-changing sound with the power to saturate an American marketplace. Here are some of the acts that could invade car radios, the Spotify homepage, and more as K-Pop’s grip tightens around the zeitgeist:
BTS
BTS appears as though they've not come to play when it comes to their upcoming album. The seven-person group are arguably the most popular K-pop act stateside and internationally, partly due to their bilingual oeuvre. The band have written three albums in Korean and three in Japanese. They've also recruited popular American acts like producer Steve Aoki and rapper
Love Yourself: Tear serves as a sequel to BTS' EP Love Yourself: Her, which featured hits "DNA" and "MIC Drop." However, Love Yourself: Tear, is seemingly taking a different direction if "Singularity," the album's first track, is indicative of the album's tone. "Singularity" is a soul/R&B solo sung slowly by band member V —comparisons to The Weeknd aren't off the money.
EXO
The nine members of EXO keep themselves busy, whether it be with solo music careers or roles in television and films. The band has been the subject of at least eight reality shows, a television drama, and 10 tour DVDs. They've done all of this, and released five albums and six EPs, in the span of a six-year career. Prolific doesn't even begin to describe EXO's accomplishments.
In January 2018, EXO dropped Countdown, the band's first foray into J-pop. To make things more complicated, three members of EXO — Chen, Baekhyun, and Xiumin — also perform as a subgroup named Exo-CBX. In May, Exo-CBX also dropped a J-pop album, featuring single "Horololo," a high-energy dubstep, electro-pop dance song.
SHINee
Unfortunately, it's impossible to write about SHINee without writing about the band's recent tragedy. In December 2017, member Jonghyun died of carbon-monoxide poisoning in what has been ruled a suicide.
The band formed as a five-piece group in 2008, and have released six Korean and five Japanese albums, as well as performing numerous appearances on reality and scripted shows. Their sound is most often described as contemporary R&B, although elements of EDM, funk, hip-hop, and dance can be heard across their oeuvre. SHINee will continue as a four-piece group, releasing a three-part album titled The Story of Light on May 28. Earlier this year, Jonghyun's second solo album, Poet | Artist, was released posthumously.
TWICE In 2015, competition-based reality show Sixteen set out to form a power-house girl group of talented singers and dancers for the JYP Entertainment Corporation. Girls were split up into major and minor groups. The major group was composed of singers already positioned for a spot
Controversy surrounded the cruel approach, but the pop-star boot camp fashioned together the nine-member TWICE. In 2016, their single "Cheer Up" was the best performing single of the year in Korea. Their latest EP, What is Love
Red Velvet Entertainment company SM Entertainment began casting members of Red Velvet as early as 2007. Red Velvet didn't officially debut until August 2014, when they released the single "Happiness" and appeared on the TV series Music Bank. Since then, they've occupied the number one position
Their latest single, "Bad Boy," comes off The Perfect Red Velvet, a reissuing of their second album. American production team The Stereotypes, who most recently worked with Bruno Mars on 24K Magic, took part in the production of the R&B-synth fusion track.