Notes on K-pop • 11th September 2025

Kai understands what women* want

On Saturday night, November 6, Madison Square Garden had two of the hottest shows for the girls and the gays in NYC: Lady Gaga was playing the arena, and Kai was playing the theater. Both artists know how to play to the crowd, and Kai that evening put on a master class during his KAION show on how to play straight into the hearts of the largely male-loving crowd. Before I go any further... I apologize. Please excuse the asterisk of the title, I couldn't come up with a less heteronormative frami...

Notes on K-pop • 2nd September 2025

Are we about to witness a K-pop live album renaissance?

This summer, it feels like all at once we saw live albums from across the industry: in July, BTS marked their return from hiatus with a several-year-old concert album from a date in Los Angeles in 2021. Then a few days later, Winner released a Best of Album featuring performances from Japan in 2019 and 2018. Then a few days after that, the Japanese K-pop inspired hitmakers XG released their live album. These are all great albums, bringing listeners into the moments of each acts' shows. But I ca...

Notes on K-pop • 18th August 2025

Notes on K-pop Interview: Kevin Woo

If you were a K-pop fan back in the mid 2010s, I bet you remember Kevin Woo in one of two contexts: he was a co-host of Arirang's English-language K-pop show After School Club, or you were trying to figure out if he was still part of U-KISS amid numerous lineup changes and their extremely good singles. You might, like me, still sometimes find yourself wondering what the hell they were singing about when "0330" featured the iconic line, "you are my r squared pi". You also might find yourself, an...

Notes on K-pop • 11th August 2025

Wonder, Her, Tear, Answer

Happy anniversary, BTS: Blood, Sweat & Tears, you're officially five-years-old today! Like any good book mom, I'm still thinking about you, and thinking about what I could have done differently: was the layout right? My tone? Did I spend too little time on one section, and too much on another? It's been a while since I woke up thinking about a potential typo that I was convinced had made it into the book, grabbed a copy, and let out a sigh of relief that it wasn't there, and then wondered where...

Notes on K-pop • 4th August 2025

2025 K-pop H1 in Review Big 4 Company Scorecard

According to The Washington Post, the sound of summer 2025 is K-pop. With K-Pop Demon Hunters winning us all over, the return of BTS confirmed now that all the members have returned to civilian life, and major acts touring US stadiums, WaPo say it's a great time to be a K-pop fan. Am I old, or does that not feel really like that's the case? WaPo is definitely going through it currently due to leadership change resulting in major impacts to journalism, so who knows if this is just an attempt to...

Notes on K-pop • 8th July 2025

Why 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' works so well

If you've watched K-Pop Demon Hunters recently, there's a likely chance that you're either listening to it right now, or possibly humming its soundtrack. If you haven't watched it yet, take a break and go watch before reading because I'm not necessarily talking about major spoilers but... You should go watch it! Released June 20, produced by Sony Pictures Animation and airing on Netflix, K-Pop Demon Hunters (aka KPDH) has become one of the biggest films of the summer, topping Netflix charts, an...

Notes on K-pop • 2nd July 2025

Stray Kids vs. the North American industrial concert complex

The US postal service's claim to fame is that "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays" its couriers from delivering mail. The Stays of Stray Kids, however, had plenty of heat, rain, and gloom of night amid the recent SKZ North American tour. The Dominate world tour which started last August in Seoul, made its way to the Americas beginning with dates in Chile in March. The USA and Canada dates kicked off in Seattle in May, and ended in Toronto last night (June 29). The six weeks...

Notes on K-pop • 25th June 2025

2025 Mid-Year Reading List

Like last year when I shared A reading list to clean up my life, my phone hates me right now because I have nearly 500 tabs consistently opened. But I did it intentionally (more or less), because I feel like by the time it comes to Spring I always forget what was going on in the first half of a year. So I saved the tabs of certain insightful and interesting reads from earlier this year, and even some from last year, and thought I'd share them with you. I'm going to organize this a bit different...

Notes on K-pop • 6th June 2025

Flexing the fandom self

It's June, which means it's the most wonderful time of year for BTS's ARMY: Festa, aka the annual celebration of the group's anniversary. Every year, the act has put out new and old content, streaming concerts, releasing special songs and concerts, commemorating each new year with ARMY. J-hope will be hosting a concert series in Seoul as part of this year's celebration; I saw him during his New York leg, and it was such a phenomenal concert. This year, of course, means even more: June marks the...

Notes on K-pop • 23rd May 2025

Notes on K-pop interview: Niel

I didn't tell him this when we spoke, but Niel, aka Ahn Daniel, aka a member of popular 2.5 K-pop boy band Teen Top, was the soundtrack to my college years. My mornings, in particular, because Teen Top's "Supa Luv" was my phone alarm that rang every morning. I loved the song, but I picked it because it's jarring in a way. It's 2025, and I still have a visceral reaction to it when I hear it, wanting to hit snooze. Teen Top's music was inescapable for several years: "Crazy", "To You", "Rocking",...

Notes on K-pop • 15th May 2025

What story is SM telling?

It's Wednesday night, May 14, as I write this. I spent the prior weekend in LA, and arrived home to NYC yesterday morning after zooming to a redeye from the Monday night launch party of Lee Soo Man: King of K-pop, directed by Ting Poo and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Although I'm featured in the film as a talking head briefly, I had not actually booked my LA trip to attend the premiere of the film. I had booked it because of SMTown, SM Entertainment's roster-wide concert, taking place on Sund...

Notes on K-pop • 4th May 2025

Schrödinger's discourse

Who is talking about K-pop anymore? Do you know? Do I know? Sometimes it feels like nobody, and everybody. I'm sitting here drinking coffee on Sunday morning and eating some amazing rugelach from my favorite bakery (if you're in NYC ever, try their babka I swear it's amazing) and thinking about how we're all talking about pop culture differently than we were a few years ago. It's not just a pivot to video like past eras; it feels like we've pivoted to parveness. "Pareve" meaning neutral in term...

Notes on K-pop • 6th April 2025

The Failure of Fantasy

Over the past few weeks, a few big major Korean entertainment-oriented stories have broken: At this point of reading, you're probably asking yourself, "Tamar, what is the connection here? Legal battles, pedophilia, and insensitivity seemingly have nothing bringing them together?" And that's a good question! But I think there is one tie: each of these situations reflect a fantasy that has been sold to audiences. And it's a terrible business model ultimately, even as lucrative as it may be before...

Notes on K-pop • 26th March 2025

Unlocking the BLACKPINK Expansion Pack

It's March 2025, and Blackpink's members as soloists now have more songs than Blackpink as a group. BLACKPINK as a team have 32 original songs (some were recorded again in Japanese, or re-released in live or remix versions). Between solo albums and singles where they're the lead artist, according to Apple Music (and my count) the members have a combined 55 songs: Lisa-17, Jisoo-6, Rosé-14, Jennie-18. (If I miscounted or am off on any of these numbers, please do let me know in the comments or v...

Notes on K-pop • 19th March 2025

Mini Note #9: The joy that comes with hard work

It's Tuesday morning before 9am as I write this now. I'm going to head to work, and then hopefully come home and hit publish on it Tuesday night after I re-read and edit a bit. I began it on Sunday night at nearly 9pm. I had the whole weekend to write it, and then also Monday before and after work. I have three other newsletter editions I need to write, edit, and publish. I've written over 100 newsletters up until today, 111 editions of Notes on K-pop according to the site, though that includes...

NME • 14th March 2025

Yeji on going solo: “All the experiences of working with ITZY have led me to this”

A few years ago, South Korea singer Yeji – a member of K-pop girl group ITZY – became the star of a meme where fans compared her to a Light Fury dragon from the animated film franchise, How to Train Your Dragon. More specifically, these memes had fans photoshopping Yeji’s hairstyles to the dragon, with her hair becoming a stand-in of sorts for her singular identity. It makes sense, then, that the first trailer for Yeji’s debut solo project, ‘Air’, featured her going from flowing long locks to cu...

Notes on K-pop • 2nd March 2025

The Best K-pop of 2024

What makes something a "Best of" release? To me, I think about this a lot, as someone who is very confident discussing the business of music but not necessarily discussing music itself. I was raised in a home where popular music wasn't listened to, and oftentimes wasn't even allowed. So even though I've spent years attempting to educate myself about music, I doubt I'll ever be confident that my opinions and music taste are legitimate, let alone valuable, or that I can write about them eloquently...

Notes on K-pop • 26th February 2025

Mini Note #8: I don't know how to stomach 'Übermensch' in 2025

G-Dragon released his first album today in 12 years. I desperately want to listen to it, to hear what he has to offer. The reviews that I've read so far have been great. I also am horribly reluctant to listen due to the framing of the album, and so am not listening today. It is, after all, titled Übermensch. According to a statement by GD, "Übermensch means ‘Beyond-Man,’ representing an individual who transcends themselves. This album embodies the idea of presenting a stronger and more resilien...

Notes on K-pop • 2nd February 2025

K-pop diss tracks are targeting the corporate machine

Last year, K-pop hit one of the messiest eras I have ever witnessed since becoming invested in the industry back in 2008. That's been a lot of mess! But last year was a bit different, as it wasn't as much about contract disputes or even criminal behavior, although there was plenty of that, but it was about business and perceptions of artists. And amid it all it was revealed during legal proceedings that Hybe had essentially its own regular negative, and even damning, reporting analysis of other...

Notes on K-pop • 21st January 2025

2024 K-pop Year in Review Big 4 Company Scorecard

As I mentioned in my year-end check-in post, I'm never quite sure what I want to accomplish with this newsletter, but I keep working on it. I could write yet another newsletter about the messiness of the business and legal sides of K-pop last year, or go on about trends we saw last year, or major moments that deserve way more thoughtful discourse than we've seen before (topics like BIGBANG's return, PLAVE's ascent, the response to the new Fifty Fifty, etc.) But... Instead... I'm going to try so...