American Pop vs. Korean Pop Music
Carleen Brandenburg (3/13/2014)
All around the world, music has been an important part
of culture. In the 1700s and 1800s it was classical music. In the 1900s it was
jazz and rock and roll, which made the music popular today. Currently we have
pop music as one of the most popular genres and every country has their own
version of pop. America’s pop and Korea’s pop are trendy for teens and young
adults, has large fan bases, have a mix of high energy and slow tempo songs
(most of the songs being high energy), and have award shows for their music.
Although American Pop and Korean Pop are similar, there are a few significant
differences with how the industry is in the two countries.
With every country’s industry there is a focus on the
band. Who’s the most important part of a band? In America, the focus of the
band is the singer and the instrumentalists. Whether the band wants to focus on
the guitarist as well as the singer or the drummer and the singer, there is
some focus on another part of the band as well as the vocalist. Within the
Korean pop music industry, the focus is slightly different. Korean pop still
focuses on the singer, but you never see any instrumentalists on stage with the
group. This is because the pop music industry in Korea focuses on the dancers.
To be a famous musician in the pop industry, you must be a good dancer as well
as a good singer. There are so many
rehearsals for choreography because the industry wants the dancing to be
flawless.
With every band there must be a steady fan base setup.
The record labels help to publicize the band, so the band can have a decent
amount of fans. It also helps to have attractive people be the famous, because
appeal helps sell no matter what country you live in. In America, a pop band
gets to be famous worldwide really fast. Because the fan base becomes huge so
fast, a pop band can do a complete world tour within a couple years. However,
in Korea, the fan base has a gradual growth. The industry in Korea also helps
publicize their artists so they have a lot of fans, but they have to work
really hard to get to a world tour. When they go on tour, they start out with a
tour all over South Korea, then eventually they get popular enough to have a
tour for all of Asia, and once they get really popular they can tour at select
locations in the USA (like LA and NYC sized cities) and Europe.
In every country, the songs are sung in the language
that the citizens speak. Some countries will sing more than one language and
for others it’s a rare thing to hear them sing in a second language. With
America, the pop artists only sing in English. Rarely do they ever sing any
words or phrases in a foreign language of any kind. Whereas in South Korea
bands do sing in Korea as well as a few words or phrases in English. It’s rare
for a song to be completely Korean in their pop industry. Once a band gets
popular enough in Japan, the band will do Japanese covers of all their best
songs that helped them become famous
With every country, music is important. Every country
may have a different idea on how to put the music together, which makes music
diverse. There are also aspects of the industry that are similar within
different countries. Although American Pop and Korean Pop are similar, the
differences they have are significant, but that’s what makes music interesting.
