I don’t need a man

I’m always alarmed and worried when the meaning in words and actions are changed from politics to the conceptual level. This is what Miss A is heading towards using a banner with the words Independent Women and This Is For All The Independent Ladies, for their new promotional pictures. To make money out of a short promotional period on the very much so important issue of womens rights is indeed higly questionable. This is obviously so much of a marketing strategy that no one can be misstaken, but who knows, Miss A might turn out to be part of a newly born feminist movement in South Korea in the end…

Good idea or bad idea to use this concept? Does it make it better or worse that they look awesome in suits and other traditional “male” attires in the teaser MV?
The Future is Idol – L

I wonder about a lot of things

I wonder about a lot of things. Today for example, I really wonder about the fact that I woke up this morning from a rather problematic dream about a member from Exo-K or why the dream ended with me and my friend Jonas eating food in the middle of the night. I wonder why I forgot to bring lunch to work so I had to go hungry, why I didn’t go and just buy something food-like and why my colleague had to tell me everything terrible about one of our students so I in the future will only think about this when I teach this student. Later in the evening at the University class of North and South Korean politics the guy next to me moved his leg so it touched my leg over and over and I wonder if he did it on purpose, because thats what it felt like. I also wonder about how it came to be that Ranias latest track Style is turning out to be this enormous obsession of mine when I never really cared about them before. In general, I wonder a lot of things about K-pop.

The Future is Idol – L

Another track from that very complicated group.

I have had my ups and downs with U-kiss over these last few years. I fell in love with their quirky sides, variety shows and extreme coreographys(crazy ass). It felt like they hand no boundaries and could say anything, and those kind of idols seem to be of my preference, the crazy ones. I also fell out of love with them as Alexander Eusebio, my favourite member, was kicked out of the group together with member Kibum. And as for being the grown man I am, this is the group that really made me realize how far my fandom and the feelings connected to it had gone. The creation of a fanboy perhaps. The anger, tears and time spent on the evil bastards of NH Media and the atermath of it all… I decided back then, when Alexander left the group, to never listen to them again. That did not work out well for me…

Kevin, my other favourite was still in the group, so talented it is hard to keep away from. To see him evolve over the past few years has been worth the watching, and most of their later releases are far better then everything released before the member-change. Neverland was awesome, and Obsession became a huge obsession. The recently released Stop Girl turned out to be a new top favourite from 2012 and then there is the melancholy of this track:

I kind of need them to sound desperate and sad from time to time. This helps.

And does not mean I accept all the current members of U-kiss. But I won’t tell which ones I don’t.

The Future is Idol – L

An Old Favorite: After School – Because of You

I started on this long post about To the Beautiful You and letting idols act as a support from the other side of the world. I sometimes tell people that I needed enough time to really immearse in it to get into kpop, but to be quite honest, I also think that I fell so much in love with it because I needed to, during some pretty dark times for me personally.

I have never really gotten that into After School as persons, so I won’t say that they helped me as idols. But one of the first kpop songs that got to me was an After School song. It was winter. On my ipod I had downloaded a bunch of random kpop songs I had found through some compilation I have no idea what it came from; I think I had pretty much just searched for “kpop” on isohunt and downloaded whatever working torrent I found. The buses didn’t run and it was too snowy to ride my bike, so I was walking to school with my heavy bags, running late but too tired to care.

And then this song came on:

As I didn’t yet know any Korean at all, I had a very vague idea of what the song was about. I realized that it was probably a sad song. But it didn’t matter. Because just at that moment,  the sun rose over the treetops. It shone on the completely snow-covered landscape, and into my eyes, and it blinded me.

/Mis

Herrejävlar DBSK

THEY ARE BACK!!! Such an awesomely great song and MV!!!

My heart melts for DBSK for the first time in years.

The Future is Idol

Key Key Key Key Key Key Key Key Key

I’m obscenly tired and feel a bit sick at the moment(yes I have myself to blame and Mis is also hungover btw), but at last nights party I did my best celebrating the birthday of the only idol truly in my heart.

Happy birthday Kim Kibum!

this love… du är så jävla bra

The Future is Idol /L

Why So Serious?

I’m in the process of writing a longer post about G-dragon due to the release of his new mini-album and my ever-shifting feelings of love, anger and awkwardness towards this idol. But then, the video for CRAYON dropped and I was just hypnotized. So, the longer post may wait a little bit, while we all watch the MV over again:

The Future is Idol/ L

jävlar alltså

A Song Calling for You

Randomly ended up watching and listening to an old favourite and it takes me back to the beginning of my fandom. I did not really understand who they were or what it was all about, but I watched it over and over again almost as obsessively as with Sorry Sorry and Genie. I became obsessed with this groups remodeled faces and listened to this song every day on my way to work (it still happens though). It makes me very happy and I take it as a sign that I was not wrong falling in love with this scene.

/The Future is idol

Our articles about K-pop

Got the May issue of Yoboseyo, the magazine of the (South)Korean society in Sweden, in my mail box the other day!

We had an article about the modern K-drama, it’s structure, different genres and influence on society published in that issue. Dancing On Our Own published one at the same time, about K-pop as a music genre. It was kind of strange to see our own words printed like that, our thoughts and knowledge somewhere else then at the blog, but a lot of fun!

The articles are in Swedish and not available online at the moment but we might upload another version, and in english, of ours at some point soon.

 

 

/The Future is Idol

Listen to our friends on the radio!

Tonight there was a K-pop special at Swedish national radio. Our friends at Dancing On Our Own were the experts. They really did a great job and I’m so happy and proud to hear them and many of my favourite K-pop tracks on Swedish radio.

Press here to listen.

LOVE from

/The Future is Idol