Bookending the decade with Brown Eyed Girls

I wasn't aware Brown Eyed Girls's Abracadabra (released in 2010) until 2014 or 2015, but because Brown Eyed Girls, like Shinee, were active at the beginning and the end of the decade, you can use the as a lesson in the evolution of Kpop of sorts.

The video for Abracadabra was sent to me in the middle of a slow workday by a coworker who was also very bored. The video is definitely NSFW, so you can deduce from this that the job wasn't a particularly, how shall we say, high rent one. No, really, it was a pretty boring job in a small office in a business park. You could get very bored very fast there, and at some point half the office started watching Kdramas and listening to Kpop and discussing makeup.

I know that about 50% of my time was spent making playlists.

Anyways, back to Abracadabra. 

It slaps. Hard. It's a sexy, energetic pop song that's heavy on the synth. The singers sound badass even without the video. I have no idea what they're saying (I keep hearing "green beans mayo fettuccini" to be completely honest), but they sound like they could break me in half with their bare hands. And the video has them blowing up an unfaithful lover or something while wearing some rather exciting fashions.


Anyways, fast forward to 2019. I hadn't really heard anything from them at all for the entire rest of the decade. Maybe they released stuff, but it wasn't on my radar. I think I went looking for it once, and was left disappointed.

Then at the end of 2019 they released an album of covers. All the fans were all "omg we waited so long for you and all we get is cover songs???" but because I know nothing whatsoever about Korean music that dates back before 2nd gen Kpop (or that isn't Kpop at all), I did not give a fuck. Especially after they released this video, which is exactly the disco romp one expects from aging divas.

They're still bad ass, but in a disco way. And if you note the video, the production value is much higher than for Abracadabra. The colours are vibrant; the lighting is fabulous; the sets are lush; the makeup and wardrobe is on point. Everyone showed up for work for this video.

And that's on the escalating arms race of Kpop videos (which is also tied to the escalating arms race of Kpop boy band choreography, but more on that later — or earlier, depending how you're reading this blog. If you even are).








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