Give a woman a powerful song to sing and she will sing it with power

Sorry I've been away! Reconfiguring my life has been complicated. I'm still kinda on a blogging hiatus, but I had thought of writing this post a while ago, and was reminded of it by James Turnbull's post marking the start of his research into k-pop girl groups and the reactions their fans have to their lyrics. Will post some more this weekend, as another hiatus is coming up - I'm taking a filmmaking class!!! And it's mad intense, so I may not be able to blog while it's going on. Don't worry though, I'll fill you in on this new direction of mine very soon :)

Kara - Mister [05.01.2010] from Matt Marasigan on Vimeo.

VAST difference between performances of "Lupin" and "Mister" at Korean Music Fest in LA last month. Wow. I like Kara, mainly because they're spunky, and Seungyeon and Gyuri have awesome voices. Mister is my favorite to listen to, but Lupin is unconventional and I enjoy performances (more than the song itself, actually). I refuse to believe that that's a coincidence, though. "Lupin" is thematically a more confident, powerful song than Mister. From what I gleaned from Youtube translations of the songs, they sing about being confident (in love?) and not being afraid in "Lupin", as opposed to simply trying to get a guy's attention in "Mister"; check here and here for respective lyrics) and it shows in their performances. They shine in "Lupin", but bore with "Mister". It might just be that "Lupin" is fresher, and they're bored of performing Mister (side effect of weekly live performances, a.k.a overkill, of songs in k-pop) but I doubt it's just that. Especially since 2NE1's performances of Fire seem to have the same energy as their debut performances (I say seem because TV camerapeople are notorious for wrecking performance videos with random sweeping tilted angles. I get motion sickness just trying to get a feel of the energy in a performance. *sigh. Anyway, check out their most recent performance here - a year later, and they're still on fire - yeah, I said it. I'm allowed puns sometimes.)

This may be part of the reason that 2NE1 does so well, despite criticism of Bom and Dara's stage presence. The songs are powerful, the girls feel powerful and embody it on stage. K-pop industry - TAKE A HINT!