By Taeyoung Kim, Loughborough University

Made in Korea: The K-Pop Experience is a six-part reality show following five British trainees over 100 days as they debut as a Korean-pop (K-pop) idol boy group called Dear Alice. In collaboration with SM Entertainment, a K-pop powerhouse, the show will introduce the behind-the-scenes of making a K-pop idol through an immersive training system.

Showing a glimpse of the lives of K-pop trainees, the first episode introduces K-pop as a multi-billion global phenomenon, stating: “Six of the top 20 best-selling artists in the world were K-pop and 90 billion streams were by K-pop idols.”

K-pop is becoming increasingly popular in the UK. Girl group Aespa and boy group BTS have sold out shows in the country’s largest arenas.

In 2023, the group Blackpink became the first Korean band to headline a UK festival at BST Hyde Park, where they played to an audience of 65,000. They were also awarded honorary MBEs by the king for their role in encouraging young people to engage with the global UN climate change conference at COP26 in Glasgow 2021.

There is certainly an appetite for shows about K-pop for western audiences. Netflix have released their own version of Made in Korea, Pop Star Academy: Katseye.

The docuseries follows 20 girls from Japan, South Korea, Australia and the UK going through a year of K-pop training to become the group Kasteye. It’s a collaboration between the K-pop label Hybe and US label Geffen (a subsidiary of Universal).

Generally speaking, K-pop is characterised by catchy and lively melodies and highly choreographed dance routines in perfect unison and fancy outfits. Inspired by various pop music genres – including but not limited to electronic dance, hip hop, and R&B – the genre became distinctive from the nation’s traditional music, especially after a handful of pioneers began producing idol groups in the 1990s.

I’m South Korean and I’m studying cultural industries, so it’s interesting for me to see westernerss becoming K-pop-inspired idol groups. It’s a famously competitive industry, which is already oversaturated with hopeful K-idols. Considering that the domestic market is small and highly saturated, their success will be a breakthrough for SM Entertainment and HYBE, as well as other K-pop companies, proving whether they can continue to grow beyond east Asia.

The production and delivery of this popular music genre have become more international than ever in recent years, with hundreds of choreographers, composers and producers worldwide contribute to creating K-pop songs and performances. In contrast, K-pop performers have until recently been predominantly Korean. But as the new shows demonstrate, this too is changing.

K-pop companies have hosted auditions outside the country to recruit foreign trainees to make their idols appeal to global audiences. Huge global music corporations like Sony, Universal Music Group and Virgin Records have also got in on the game, signing distribution contracts with major K-pop idols to promote their music in foreign markets.

This search isn’t because there is a lack of willing hopefuls in Korea. There were around an estimated 800 trainees waiting to debut in 2022. But Korea’s population is only around 50 million and record companies want to appeal beyond the domestic market, so they are hoping recruiting non-Korean stars will help do that.

Music agencies in the west tend to find new artists who are already gifted and then largely serve as intermediaries arranging things like tours, marketing and artists’ wider schedules. However, major K-pop companies have developed a unique system of finding and launching new artists. This involves hosting auditions with a competition of at least 1,000 to 1 odds. The winners then undergo years of of acting, vocal, and dance training before debuting.

To make the vocals flawless and the dance moves precise, trainees, known as yeonseupsaeng (연습생), are expected to spend up to 17 hours per day practising performances and training for several years – although they aren’t guaranteed to become professional artists. Even if they do become successful, their private lives – including their dating lives – are strictly controlled.

It is no exaggeration to say that the industry is labour-intensive as well as capital-intensive, built on the blood, sweat and tears of yeonseupsaeng.

The first episode of Made in Korea ends with SM’s director Hee Jun Yoon’s critique of the Britons’ first performance. It’s difficult viewing for those unfamiliar with the harsh world of K-pop. To borrow the words of BBC’s unscripted content head, Kate Phillips, it makes “Simon Cowell look like Mary Poppins.”

Some might question the prefix “K-” being used to describe these international groups but the genre will remain decidedly Korean. It is Korean companies which will lead the production mechanisms and the domestic market will continue to serve as the testbed for new artists. But the success of Dear Alice and Katseye is important if the genre is to survive and continue to grow beyond Korea.

Taeyoung Kim, Lecturer in Communication and Media, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Glenn Fosbraey – University of Winchester

The worst-kept secret in the music world is out: Oasis are back. And the only real surprise is that it’s taken so long for it to happen. Since there have been bands, bands have been breaking up. And since bands have been breaking up, bands have been reforming.

Some have led to creative rebirths (Blur, Pixies, Blondie). Others have been disappointing (The Velvet Underground, Outkast, Kiss).

Some bands, like The Go-Go’s have broken up and reformed so many times that it’s hard to keep count. Some split and get back together before anyone knows they’ve even separated, like The Verve, who separated with no intention of reforming in 1995 but were back in the studio only weeks later.

And some take decades to get back together, like the 60s band The Hustlers, who reformed 50 years after splitting upon discovering they had been misinformed about the death of their drummer.

But most reunions have simply led to healthy bank balances for the artists and a chance to relive the good old days for the fans.

For boy or girl bands, breaking up and reuniting is a pretty straightforward process, honed to perfection over the years by Take That, Boyzone, Steps, Girls Aloud, 5ive, Blue, Spice Girls, All Saints, Busted and the Sugababes (and with Little Mix, One Direction, and Fifth Harmony currently midway through the process). The formula is simple.

1. A band’s success starts to wane.
2. The most popular member – let’s call them band member A – thinks (or is told) they can do better on their own and leaves to begin a solo career.
3. Band member A’s first single does well, and the band they’ve left (if they’ve decided to carry on) also have success with their next release as fans rally round the remaining members.
4. The rest of the band embark on solo careers, each of which is less successful than the last.
5. Band member A soldiers on with diminishing returns as the rest of the band respectively dance on ice; act in soap operas, or go and do something in LA.
6. Following years of dwindling sales for band member A, and high profile divorces, lawsuits or bankruptcies for the rest (and possibly band member A as well), the band announce they are reforming. Not because of their faltering individual popularity or the need to finance those divorces, lawsuits or bankruptcies, but “for the fans”. A nation celebrates, and the tabloids report that Ticketmaster has crashed due to the number of people wanting tickets to the comeback gigs.
7. Repeat as necessary depending on upcoming anniversaries and TikTok trends.

When are you getting back together?

Society and the media alike have long been obsessed with legacy acts, comebacks and reunion tours. The Beatles fielded the “when are you getting back together” question so often that it became a running joke in interviews.

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and David Gilmour are still being asked four decades since Waters left the group, and, until August 27, Liam and Noel Gallagher had been similarly bombarded since Oasis’s split in 2009.

The only official statement to emerge so far from Oasis HQ appeared on the Gallaghers’ social media channels where they said: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.” But in the coming weeks and months we will probably hear things about “unfinished business” or it being “the right time”.

Or perhaps they’ll do a John Lydon, who declared before the Sex Pistols’ 1996 reunion that, although the band still hated each other “with a vengeance”, they had “found a common cause, and that’s your money”.

Maybe they’ll even point to the fact that each of Liam Gallagher’s solo albums has spent less time on the album charts than the one before it. Or that Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds albums have done exactly the same thing.

Or that Noel’s latest, Council Skies, is his first album to miss out on the number one spot and exited the charts altogether after eight weeks (compared with the band’s self-titled debut, which hung around for well over a year).

Whatever the reason for their return, Oasis fans won’t care. To them, it’s not the why that’s important, but the fact it’s happening. Time will tell if the reuniting of the brothers Gallagher is going to taint their legacy or enhance it.

And it may well be, as with The Verve, Sex Pistols and The Velvet Underground that even after reforming, the issues that caused the breakup in the first place will resurface and finish them off once and for all.

The knives are already out in the media, with detractors predicting a disaster, but let’s not forget the Telegraph piece from last year, which urged Blur not to get back together as “reunions are always terrible” only for the same newspaper to later call their comeback a triumph. Oasis fans will have their fingers crossed that the brothers Gallagher can pull it off too – and keep their newly rekindled relationship intact.

Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Janina Smietanka, University of Plymouth