Taking apart the lyrics of idol groups’ hit songs

The most distinct characteristic of idol groups' songs is that they have no meaning. They tend to simply repeat certain words in the chorus. For instance, take songs by T-ara. There are "Bo Peep Bo Peep" "Roly Poly" and "Lovey Dovey". Before, Korean pop songs used to talk about life. Even up to the 90s, the songs had some meaning and message.

But these days, the songs are superficial at best. The chorus is filled with meaningless onomatopoeia. Korean words are often haphazardly mixed with English words which are spiced with dirty slang. This is definitely a bit over the top to simply be passed off as a fad.

"Lovey Dovey" is repeated 18 times in the chorus of T-ara's hit song but this is acceptable compared to "Bo Peep bo peep" being repeated 110 times. What's worse is that much of the chorus is filled with "Oh" "ah" "bo peep" instead of legitimate Korean words.

SHINEE's "Ring ding dong" is no exception and Fx's "Hot summer" repeats the word "hot" over 80 times. A K-Pop critic stated that "There are songs that resonate in your heart due to a couple of well-written lyrics. These days, the lyrics are simply used to convey the addictive melody."

Often, English words and Korean words are mixed together awkwardly. Block B's songs are no exception to this trend. Many songs are peppered with swear words and provocative phrases. NS Yoonji's "Why I became a witch" is one such example.

The songs' way of expressing love has become extremely narrow. A netizen critiqued that "these days the only ways that songs sing of love is by 'I love you baby' 'I'm a bad boy/girl' 'you're pretty. Wanna go out with me?' 'you took my boy/girl' 'we broke up' and phrases as such."

A songwriter confessed that "In the past, the lyrics were written before the song but these days, many people write the song first and fit in the lyrics. This inevitably causes the lyrics to deteriorate in quality." A song usually lingers for about 1-2 weeks in a music chart and in order to spark the listeners' interest and attention, the song needs to have a lot of repetition which will stick to the listeners' mind.

K-Pop critic Lim Jin Mo also said that "pop songs must have a certain aspect of universalism that can get anyone to empathize with the song. But these lyrics, which do not possess such characteristic, may prevent global fans from consistently loving and coming back to K-Pop."

Tags
K-Pop
lyrics
T-ARA
Roly Poly
Lovey-Dovey
SHINee
Hot Summer
Ring Ding Dong
Block B
f(x)
NS Yoon-G
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