Retro genre: South Korean artists relive 1970s and ’80s happier sounds in ‘city pop’ revival
- Amid the K-pop boom, young South Korean artists are revisiting songs from the late 20th century
- City pop is a funky urban sound from Japan, and is enjoying a revival in Seoul and on YouTube
By Jung Hae-myoung
While K-pop fever continues to sweep the globe, some young South Korean artists are reviving a sound from the 1980s known as “city pop”, creating a buzz among the country’s music fans.
City pop refers to a style of music that originated in Japan and was popular from the mid-1970s to the early ’90s. As its name suggests, the style has an urban atmosphere with a rhythmic, funky base that is usually expressed with minutely chopped rhythms of guitars or synthesisers.
Last week, Baek Ye-rin, a 21-year-old musician who swept South Korea’s music charts with Our Love Is Great in March, released a new song titled Before I Know It. The song was originally performed by singer-songwriter Jang Pil-soon in 1989.
This is the latest release from the “Digging Club Seoul” project, which sheds light on songs and artists from the 1980s and ’90s that made up the city pop sound. The project is part of On Stage 2.0, a social responsibility programme organised by the Naver Cultural Foundation.
“There was lots of great music in the 20th century, but I didn’t have many chances to learn about it,” Baek said after participating in the project. “I hope more people can encounter music they were not aware of from Digging Club Seoul.”
How the West was won – by BTS. The secret to K-pop stars’ success
City pop hit South Korea in the 1980s. Stars including Hyeuni, Kim Hyun-chul, Kim Wan-sun and the band Light and Salt took to the genre.
However, the sound proved to be a short-lived fad. It arrived at a time when student movements were active and the sound was seen as too light by those looking for music with a serious message.
About 30 years later, the music has been rediscovered by millennials and is becoming a leading musical trend of 2019.
“The style feels so new and fresh,” 24-year-old Hong Ik-hyun says. “The lyrics are simple as well as the rhythms. I feel like I’m living in a time when everyone was more innocent.”
Music critics say this trend is a reaction to the difficulties that young people now face. “In these busy and harsh times, people are trying to seek comfort and gain satisfaction through music that seems to recall happier days,” said Jung Duk-hyun, a music critic.
Another music critic, Kim Yoon-ha, said: “Because of its sweet and smooth sound, it is hard not to like this kind of music. It’s a trend because people are seeking a romantic escape, going back to the happiest times of their lives.”
City pop is seeing a resurgence on YouTube and social media. The rebirth of city pop started in nightclubs in Seoul’s Hongdae area, and from there a growing number of city pop music videos have been doing the rounds on YouTube and social media, especially Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love, released in 1984.
The Digging Club Seoul project came about after Kim Hong-ki, the director of music content start-up Space Oddity, first noticed the trend in his office.
Space Oddity has been working with the Naver Cultural Foundation since 2018 to “dig up” hidden Korean musical masterpieces that originally did not receive much attention, but have since earned a place in Korean pop history.
“Two years ago, I told my staff to listen to whatever music they wanted and one of our staffers kept listening to Japanese music from the 1980s. I asked him why he was listening to it and he said city pop had become a new trend,” Kim said.
“I then found out about 1980s Korean music. At that time, Seoul was seen as a chic city by the younger generation so I decided to propose a city pop project.”
The project to revive city pop received a boost when George, a rising singer-songwriter, remade Kim Hyun-chul’s album After a Long Time, followed by Sunwoo Jung-a’s re-recording of Hyeuni’s Heaven Is Mine.
“This year, as 14 curators will gather for a discussion on Korean music in the 1990s and review its meaning in history,” another spokesman for Digging Club Seoul said.
What you didn’t know about CNBLUE’s lead singer Jung Yong-hwa
Singer-songwriter Lee Juck is excited about participating in this project, hoping that more classic songs would be rediscovered.
“During the project I curated the music that influenced me as well as music that can be played any time in my mind,” he said. “Like Wonderland when Alice goes down the rabbit hole, I want to see people really digging into this great world of music and unearthing forgotten sounds from the 20th century.”
