Client: DAZED
If the past few years have been focused on expanding K-pop (more global tours and festivals, more English releases), then 2023 was the expansion of the industry’s biggest companies’ interests beyond K-pop itself. HYBE bought Exile Music to enter the Latin American market, JYP Entertainment and Republic Records created the US girl group VCHA, and HYBE and Geffen made KATSEYE. Both girl groups, created using the K-pop training system, were envisioned as K-pop without the ‘K’ which, Geffen noted, wasn’t an unfeasible proposition since K-pop was also, essentially, just “pop” at this point.
But is that really true? The wider Western industry doesn’t seem to agree. In 2019, the MTV VMA’s controversially split K-pop artists away from the pop category, and still does, and BTS, the only Korean act nominated in the Grammy’s Pop Duo/Group category, received inclusion only for their English language songs. Yet on a recent New York Times Times podcast, BTS’s Jung Kook was slated for sounding too American, too much like a “washed up Justin Timberlake”, on his debut solo record and not enough like K-pop.
The long-running debate over what makes K-pop actually K-pop was reinvigorated, not so much on Twitter/X – once the main hub of K-pop discourse – but TikTok. The platform, home to de rigueur thirst and appreciation edits, has become the mecca for all things K-pop, including reactors, dance covers and tutorials, once the reserve of YouTube, but particularly critique. The flipside to the increasing power of TikTok (and Spotify) is seen as its increasing detrimentality to the music itself. Labels hungering to go viral and boost streams continue to shorten tracks to well below three minutes, the result being too many songs feeling rushed, unfinished and under-explored.
Still, 2023 has been a bumper year for hits. Stray Kids, TXT, ENHYPEN, TWICE, aespa, and SEVENTEEN, amongst others, added yet more platinum records to their walls but the new guard, like NewJeans, IVE and ZEROBASEONE, are already making their mark as million sellers, signalling a generational change in the K-pop landscape. It seems fitting for us to make some changes, too, bidding farewell to rankings and including deep cuts to the ‘Best Of K-pop 2023’ for a more rounded celebration of a year of amazing music. And, that said, let’s dive in.
Taylor Glasby 