One of my secret guilty pleasures – which I will never admit if you ask me to my face – is listening to K-pop music. Curious for an old guy who came of age in the ‘70s listening to Bob Seeger? Sure. But the sheer energy, tight choreography and just exuberant fun of the music videos you see from OH MY GIRL is surprisingly addictive.
Towards the end of that high-energy video, one of the things I enjoyed most is the appearance of some great classic cars. Yes, that’s right, I was looking at the classic Aston-Martin. Hard to believe, no? That’s not to say that Hyojung, Mimi, YooA, Seunghee, Jiho, Binnie and Arin aren’t easy on the eyes, but man, that video packs so much into three minutes besides just seven pretty girls, you can’t look away.
Their hit song NONSTOP, part of their mini-album by the same name, made number one on the Soompi’s K-Pop Music Chart this week. The video itself – outside of the classic cars and pretty girls – is presented as a colorful, virtual board game of sorts, and for those of you like me, who don’t speak Korean, it’s about falling in love with a friend, who in the video is represented as a teddy bear. The high-energy music starts out with a little bit of a tropical feel to it. It’s deeper than your standard pop music, and later in the video there is a bit of hip-hop that comes through, and of course I completely lost count of the costume changes. The girls really show their musical, dance and fashion chops on this one, with a clarity that is often not seen in today’s music.
This girl group has become one of the most talked-about groups in Korea, and it’s not just because of their recent appearance on “Queendom” – their domination of the charts and popularity even here in the West can be solidly attributed to their talent, energy and creative video backdrops, and the fact that listening to their music – whether you can understand the lyrics or not – just makes you want to get up and dance. Of course, you won’t see this old man dancing to K-pop any time soon, that’s just not something anybody would ever want to see – but there is no mistaking the talent these girls bring to the stage.
