Kpop Music Mondays: GD&TOP “High High”
This week we review the music video for GD&TOP “High High” and try to deal with Martina’s fangirl insanity for TOP. And it looks like we’re gonna have to deal with lots of other fangirls with this video, because this is the most requested video for our Music Mondays EVER. Or it could have been Martina secretly filling out our Music Mondays Request Form hundreds of times.
Anyhow, we said it in the video and we’ll say it here as well: this is the kind of video we’d like to see more of in Kpop. Sure, generic club scenes are generic, many of you may say, but at least they’re accessible. Stuff like JYJ’s “Ayyy Girl” video, which was a good song, really limited its international appeal by being such a bad video. It was perfect for fangirls who got to see their idols looking great, but to those uninitiated into Kpop the video looked quite weird, and might have been alienating. Or, at least that’s our fear. This video, on the other hand, was not only released on YouTube first – so as to hit the international audience – it was a video that many people can understand just fine: two guys rapping and having fun at a club. No awards will be given for most original video award, but at least it does well for marketing.
The song’s great as well. The beat is bumping, and GD & TOP are having fun on the mic. They’re not the best singers in the world, so they focus on what they’re best at: rapping. Back to JYJ for a minute though: what’s up with Kpop in English talking about being so high that they can touch the sky? JYJ did it and punched an eagle, while GD & TOP were a lot less violent about it. They had playboy passports as well, and they took an airplane to get that high (if we’re to trust the beginning of their video at all), while JYJ just, umm, flew there. Must be convenient being gods and all.
A couple of things we didn’t mention in the video, because it might have been too nitpicky: check out the video at 0:47 seconds. Did you see how huge that girl is compared to GD? She’s monstrous! Then GD tries to climb on the rails to match her height, but it’s still not enough, so then they just get rid of her and put two other short girls in her place instead. Ha! Poor planning on behalf of the directors.
Anyhow, this is going to be our last Music Monday of 2010! Next week we’re doing our “How to Dance Kpop 2010″ video, and that’s going to take the place of our Music Mondays for the week, but we’ll be back in January for all new episodes. Huzzah! And, as always, JB and Annie from [닉쑤] Enjoy Your Happy Life~* are awesome for so diligently translating all of our videos into Korean. They’re the best! Anyhow, if you’re a big fan of Big Bang like Martina is, you might be interested in picking up their 2011 Calendar for the new year. Huzzah!
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