Surfing the Hallyu: Akdong Musician

Jul 25, 2014

Current Addiction: Taeyang's "Eyes, Nose, Lips"

Friday, July 25, 2014 Akdong Musician, Big Bang, Eric Nam, K-Pop, Lydia Paek, Tablo, Taeyang, YG Entertainment No comments

It's been over a month since Taeyang released his new album RISE containing hit track "Eyes, Nose, Lips" and, to be really honest, I'm still not over how awesome this song is. It's an amazing contemporary R&B track with a haunting melody and an addictive hook. It's no wonder the song is everywhere.

In a smart marketing move, YG is not only accepting cover entries for an "Eyes, Nose, Lips" cover competition, they've also released 3 (so far) YG Family covers from Akdong Musician, Tablo, and Lydia Paek. Each one of these covers are awesome in their own right and despite changing up the lyrics - adding rap verses, or totally changing the song into English and just keeping the basic foundation of the song's hook - they've all just succeeded in making me fall in love with the original version even more.

Brother-sister duo Akdong Musician put their own spin on the song and the results are fantastic

Epik High's Tablo angrily rewrites the song and churns out a purely English rap version
with Taeyang joining in on the song's bridge and outro

Quest Crew member and YG producer and artist Lydia Paek puts out the same song minus the angst

I've been listening to these covers on repeat. They're awesome and, for covers, all quite unique. They took the original and spun the song on its feet and made it their own, without forgetting that they're all homages to Taeyang's awesome single.

As a testament to how awesome this song is, several different Korean artists have also come out with their own covers. Eric Nam's version (video posted below) is, by far, my favorite. I've ripped the audio from YouTube and I listen to it on repeat. K-pop groups 2BiC, BTS, and Topp Dogg have also uploaded their own renditions onto YouTube. Even Korean YouTube-star and guitar prodigy, Sungha Jung (a frequent YG collaborator) has released his own guitar cover of the song.

Solo artist Eric Nam loves the song so much that he came out with 2 different covers,
the English version posted above and a live Korean version

Now I'm off to watch more covers from fans all around the world. VIPs rock!

Jun 30, 2014

My Lists: 15 favorite k-pop songs of 2014 thus far

Monday, June 30, 2014 2NE1, A Pink, Akdong Musician, Bangtan Boys, Beast, CN Blue, Exo, Gain, Girls' Generation, Got7, Jung GiGo, K-Pop, Lists, MBLAQ, Rain, Soyou, Taeyang No comments

Once again, another 6 months have passed just like that and we're now entering the second half of 2014. How is time flying by so fast?!

The first half of 2014 saw the return of the king of k-pop Rain, as well as the debuts of two amazing rookie groups, Got7 and Akdong Musician. We've also been given the long-awaited full-length albums of 2NE1 and Taeyang (it was about damn time, honestly). And this past months also gave me my current addiction; a song by artists I never paid much attention to before, Soyou & Jung GiGo.

So just as I've done for the past year, I'm listing down my favorite songs released during the first half of this year, for the months of January to June 2014.

Rain - "La Song"