By Jung Hae-myoung
Cover songs and remakes are in vogue as the Korean music scene goes retro. With young artists re-recording old albums that didn't gain much attention after they were released in the 1980s, the musical genre called "city pop" is appealing to music fans and creating a buzz.
City pop refers to a style of music originated in Japan that was popular from the mid-1970s to early 1990s. As the name suggests, the music style has an urban atmosphere with a rhythmic, funky base that is usually expressed with the minutely chopped rhythms of guitars or synthesizers.
On Wednesday, Baek Ye-rin, a 21-year-old musician who swept Korea's music charts with "Our Love Is Great" in March, released a new song called "Before I Know it." The song was sung originally by singer-songwriter Jang Pil-soon in 1989.
This is the latest release from the "Digging Club Seoul" project, which sheds light on songs and artists from the 1980s and 1990s that made up a music style called city pop. The project is part of ON STAGE 2.0, a social responsibility program of Naver Cultural Foundation.
"There was lots of great music in the 20th century, but I didn't have many chances to learn about it," Baek said after participating in the project. "I hope more people can encounter music they were not aware of from the Digging Club Seoul."
City pop reached Korea in the 1980s. Stars including Hyeuni, Kim Hyun-chul, Kim Wan-sun and the band Light and Salt took to the genre.
However, the music was merely a short-lived fad at the time. It was when the student movements were active and to those who sought music with serious messages, city pop was deemed too light. It was also rejected by the popular culture market for not having as much fun rhythm as other music.
Some 30 years later, the music has been rediscovered by millennials and became the leading trend in music in 2019.
"The style feels so new and literally fresh," 24-year-old Hong Ik-hyun said.
"The lyrics are simple as well as the rhythm. I feel like I'm living in a time when everyone was more innocent."
Music critics say this trend is a reaction to the difficulties that young people face in reality.
"Because of the busy and harsh reality nowadays, people are trying to seek comfort and gain satisfaction through music that seems to recall happy days," said Jung Duk-hyun, a music critic.
Another music critic, Kim Yoon-ha, said, "With the sweet and smooth sound of city pop, it is hard not to like this kind of music."
She added, "The city pop trend can be explained by people wanting a romantic escape, going back to the happiest times of our lives."
The trend fell into place with a surge on YouTube and social media. The fad started among nightclubs in the Hongdae area, and from then a growing number of city pop music videos were shared on YouTube and social media,especially Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love," released in 1984.
The Digging Club Seoul project also started with this as Kim Hong-ki, the director of Space Oddity, first noticed this as a trend in his office.
Space Oddity is a startup music content corporation that has been working
with Naver Cultural Foundation since 2018 to "dig up" hidden masterpieces in Korean pop music that did not receive much attention back in the day, but deserve notice as part of Korean pop music history.
"Two years ago, I told my staff to turn on and listen to whatever music they wanted and one of the staffers in our office kept listening to Japanese music that was famous in the 1980s. I asked him why he was listening to this kind of music, and he said city pop is a trend these days," Kim said.
"I found out about 1980s Korea and at that time, Seoul was seen as very chic by the younger generations in the country. So I decided to make a city pop project proposal."
The project helped revive the city pop trend when George, a rising singer-songwriter, remade Kim Hyun-chul's album "After a Long Time," followed by Sunwoo Jung-a rerecording Hyeuni's "Heaven Is Mine."
Do enjoy the music!!
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