pop music
Do Squeaky-Clean Child Pop Stars Even Matter Anymore?
With the recent Miley Cyrus reputation-burning VMAs performance, one wonders if there is a sustainability and need for squeaky-clean pop stars. Do these kids realize that kid hip-hop acts like Matty B may just be a waiting room for a latex-bikini phase?
How It Feels to Grow Up in Korea and Hate K-Pop
Having been born and raised in Korea, I always had a strong desire to reject homogeny. Everybody already looked and dressed like me, so I felt my only way out was by breaking that cultural uniformity—this, for me, meant avoiding K-Pop as much as...
The New #Fan #Armies of Twitter
Ever since Elvis’s earliest gyrations in the 1950s, pop music has turned impressionable adolescents into screaming, crying, snotting psychopaths. Today is no different, except that the fans are fatter and they congregate on Twitter.
My Brother Was in a Chinese Boy Band
In 2001, my older brother Rich went to Beijing. Once there, he lied about his age, changed his name to Jun (which means handsome in Chinese), and started a pop group. Their biggest hit was a song called "Get On Up and Get Down," which they performed in...
