First of all, I have no issue if someone likes J-pop, C-pop, any type of pop more than K-pop. Personally I’m more of a fan of 2nd and 3rd gen K-pop, so the new stuff isn’t as appealing to me. However, I constantly notice the same attacks or arguments against K-pop, and why J-pop isn’t as popular. It doesn’t make sense.
- J-pop is more authentic and appeals locally, thus is better than K-pop since K-pop tries to appeal globally
This whole argument is a contradiction. If you prefer J-pop fine, but if K-pop applied to the mainstream mass wouldn’t that explain why more people prefer it more. The rest of the world is not going to have the same taste as Japan, a single nation, which is why J-pop is more of niche internationally. There’s a reason why indie groups in the US aren’t as popular as Arianna Grande.
2) J-pop is better than K-pop, but the Korean government puts more money into it
If a country invests more money into it’s pop music, wouldn’t that mean better production? Money to pay vocal coaches, dance instructors, choreographies, etc. Also a more competitive culture in which trainees desire to become the next stars. Similarly this was said about popping/street dance, which led to Korea winning global competitions, and nobody’s denying their dancing abilities.
In the context of advertising, the argument still doesn’t hold as it’s already established that “local, authentic” J-pop is different from “mainstream, manufactured” K-pop.
3) J-pop choreography recently is just as complex as K-pop
Maybe the newer J-pop has more complex choreo, but K-pop has had hundreds of groups doing so for the past few decades. Out of all of them, only a few groups such as BTS and Black Pink had made it to a certain level. K-pop choreo has always been more complex than J-pop, and a few (recent) changes doesn’t put J-pop choreo on the same level historically and by sheer numbers.
Obviously everyone will have different preferences and I’m not offended if someone likes a certain genre of music over my favorite. But these contradicting arguments against K-pop are extremely common and loud nowadays. The exact arguments had even been said for C-pop > K-pop. There’s also often racist undertones, which suggest that Koreans and Japanese are the same, or Korea is just a “cheaper” version of Japan.
submitted by /u/sndmrentve
[link] [comments]
