This is Super Junior. They're responsible for "Sorry Sorry." Yes, they are 13 in the group. All I can remember is the chubby one.
Those of y’all know who know my wife know that when she falls for something, she falls, and falls HARD. (Which explains why she’s stuck around me all these 11 years.) Her latest craze, as I blogged a few weeks ago, is Korean pop music, or KPop. It started after she fell head over heels in like with the Korean actors in Boys Over Flowers. She later learned that Kim Hyun Joong (spelling?), who played one of the lead roles (obviously I can’t remember the name, and I’m too lazy to Google it), started in a reality show called We Got Married, which hooks two single Korean celebrities and engages them in a once-a-week marriage; she then religiously watched all episodes that featured him and Hwang Bo, his “wife.”
After that, well, all heck broke loose. Her best friend, our maid of honor Jenna, introduced her to KPop, including Shinhwa, her latest obsession, and the Wonder Girls. (I want nobody, nobody but choo…. you know the song). She can sing the lyrics to the songs, even if she doesn’t know what they mean. At the start, I thought it was cute. Now, it’s all over the house. She watches the DVDs. She plays the mp3s. She YouTubes the videos. (Hyun Joong is part of a boy band called SS501, and she actually ordered it from Korea. I mean, WOW, right?)
I thought I was immune, but then she played this song called Sorry Sorry by a 13-man (!) group called Super Junior, and man, that song is catchy! I can’t stop humming it! Even if the words make absolutely no sense to me, how hard is it to go “Naega naega naega meonjeo Nege nege nege ppajyeo Ppajyeo ppajyeo beoryeo?” I thought Nobody was brain candy, but this is really something else! Shinhwa’s currently on hiatus, because of members are currently serving their required two-year stint in the Korean military, so some of them are doing solo albums, and this fellow named Junjin has a catchy song of his own, a few years old that we only discovered now, called Wa. That song is also pretty catchy.
Cathy and I were discussing how proud Korea must be of its Kpop phenomenon, and we were basically lamenting the lack of an authentic Filipino sound. I mean, Koreans spend BILLIONS on their music industry because it’s young and exciting. There’s new stuff coming out, all the time. Locally, what are we doing? Just remake after remake, revival after revival. We need to be original, radio needs to help us out by playing the newer stuff… it’s tough. (I’ll probably make a separate blog post on that.)
I recently blogged about how, in a few weeks months years, I’ll be joining Victory Greenhills as its music ministry head. I’ll have the opportunity to write praise and worship full-time (and hopefully, on the side, songs that I can sell introduce to Pinoy artists). How cool would it be to have Christian music that sounds like Kpop? I mean, I want to be original and all that, but come on, we are in the world, not of it. Wouldn’t it be great to have music like this that praises God?)
