The last few days for K-pop have been historic ones, with Min Hee Jin and HYBE one-upping one another with press conferences and press statements. We’re in the era of she said-they said, with legal teams attempting their best to come out on top. It’s unclear based on
Hello, hello! I mentioned a few weeks ago on Linkedin that I was thinking of offering some sort of course or fellowship, and the interest really blew me away. I did some thinking, and ultimately decided to launch a summer fellowship for this newsletter to help two people looking to
More than any year, or even month, than I can remember, K-pop fans are following the money around the industry closely in Spring 2024. While there have definitely been other periods of interest for fans to pay attention to financial issues (like a company's hostile takeover) and/or
Nowadays, we live in a world where everyone is expected to perform all the time for social media, whether with awareness or unwittingly: you can wake up thinking it'll be a normal day, but by midnight your life can have changed because a video of you on an
On Thursday night, I saw Suga of BTS in concert. It was at a NYC AMC, and a recording of his Agust D-Day tour's final Seoul date. I had previously been in-awe of the theatrical, personal slant of the show when I saw it live last year, and
Everything I know about the Premiere League is based on Ted Lasso. So imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when a friend of mine told me her brothers were trying to decide whether they should keep their plans for a trip to the UK, or if they should sell
On April 1, YG Entertainment's newest act BabyMonster (aka Baemon or BABYMONSTER) released their latest single "SHEESH" and their first EP, BabyMons7er. It was promoted as their debut, even though they had ostensibly debuted with their single "Batter Up" last November, which was followed
Thoughts, stories and ideas.
Thanks for reading this edition of Notes on K-pop. Your free subscription helps inspire my work and your readership fuels me to pursue original essays and interviews. If you’re already subscribed and able to, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription so I can keep this
Incoming!!!! This is the first of a series for Notes on K-pop focusing on creatives who work within and around the K-pop sphere, featuring American multi-faceted producer Dem Jointz. I reached out to Dem Jointz, among a few other producers, last year to discuss why children's songs and
On Sunday, for 10 minutes or so, I thought that Fifty Fifty had won a Grammy. This would make the act, whose "Cupid" went viral on TikTok last year and took off with roaring success, the first K-pop artist to ever win one thanks to featuring on the
Thanks for reading this edition of Notes on K-pop. Your free subscription helps inspire my work and fuels me to pursue original essays and interviews. If you’re already subscribed and able to, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription so I can keep this newsletter going,
Every year starts more or less the same: with a sense of hope that it'll be better than the last. But for K-pop, 2023 left the industry in a tumultuous state, and 2024 is going to have to figure out what it all means. A brief, very generalized
Hello, hello from my quasi January Hiatus. I'm back in New York City after a week in Seoul, and I am here asking you to take some a few brief moments to talk about money. Please note this will (hopefully!) be the last housekeeping newsletter before I get
I was very proud of myself for getting out my "welcome to my world (pt 2)" newsletter this morning. But it turns out that not every subscriber was added to my ghost account for some reason. So let's try this again shall we? Welcome to the
Trying things out here on Ghost Welcome to my new home! If you're seeing this, it's (hopefully) because you are already a subscriber to Notes on K-pop, free or paid. Due the company's policy of complicity towards Nazis, white supremacy, and all around hate
I asked, here's what you said
Albums were not really a thing for K-pop in 2023. That is a wild thing, considering that over 22 million K-pop albums sold in the first half of this year. But when I talk about albums, I mean quality albums. Curated collections that go together, and are put out as
The soundtrack of 2023 according to me, myself, and I
What a depressing thing to write in 2023