Tag Archives: k-pop

The Role of Unique Voices in VTubing, K-Pop, and More

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“Is it more important to me for a group song to sound good or have distinct voices?”

This is something that’s been on my mind lately as I’ve been exploring my own feelings about music- and idol-adjacent worlds.

I have an odd relationship with K-Pop. I think it can be good, but it’s also definitely not my preference generally, and as someone who seeks to be open-minded, I keep resisting the urge to write off huge swathes of it. The last thing I want to be is dismissive, so I listen and listen, but it just never seems to fully click. Even with songs that I enjoy, something bothers me in the back of my head. Also confusing is that I seem to end up enjoying songs inspired by K-Pop more than K-Pop itself. Case in point: “Dark Breath” by hololive VTuber La+ Darknesss. That includes both the song itself and the accompanying dance (which I know is part of the appeal of K-Pop).

Speaking of, La+ has been crossing over in all sorts of places: notably performing with non-hololive VTubers, doing covers of songs by the League of Legends K-Pop-style group K/DA (alongside her fellow hololive members) for Riot Games One, and being one of two VTuber ambassadors for the very first The iDOLM@STER/Love Live joint concert. 

And here, despite the hololive performances of “POP/STARS” and “Baddest” being less polished, I also enjoy them more than the originals. I don’t think it’s merely because I know the VTubers, so I’ve been doing a good deal of listening to K/DA for the first time, and revisiting Love Live! in between VTuber songs.

Different franchises and media projects have their own priorities. Love Live! and The iDOLM@STER are both just as much about voice acting as they are music, and being able to easily distinguish between individuals based on how they sound is a big part of helping each character/performer to garner their own fandoms. 

For example, I don’t think you need to have any familiarity with Love Live! to notice that “Cutie Panther” features three very distinct voices. The differences can be exaggerated, but they’re present nevertheless.

Similarly, the start of ReGLOSS’s “Shunkan Heartbeat” has each of the five hololive members singing a part of the beginning by themselves, and it’s because the song is as much an introduction of them as five distinct entities (each with their own Youtube channel). That’s part of the VTuber business model. 

This is not to say that songs need distinct voices to be good, and there’s plenty of music with easily differentiated voices that is lacking in other ways, including within those voice-acting/VTuber/idol domain. But when I listen to Blackpink, for instance, I find it is nowhere near as easy to tell the singers apart. It might just be a lack of familiarity on my part, but I also feel that it might not even be the fault of the singers themselves. After all, if you picked three random people out of a room and told them to all sing, there’s a good chance they’d all sound different from one another, even if they weren’t good.

The culprit, I believe, could be how K-Pop is produced. That industry seems to be built on projecting images of perfection, and the result is that everyone sounds flawless. However, this has the drawback of also removing the quirks in people’s voices and by extension their individuality. And even with K/DA, I feel that their songs do a relatively better job of keeping these qualities, perhaps because the source material was a game with over 150 unique playable characters.

Which is to say: 1) While I don’t think distinct voices can be the only thing a song has, nor a lack of such a quality to be a deal breaker, I think it can add a lot to a song. 2) I think part of the reason K-Pop feels so overproduced to me is because of the way it seems to hone and chisel the music to such an extent as to wipe out those interestingly unique qualities that singers possess. 

And all this leads me down another rabbit hole, which is thinking about the different roles a singer can have when it comes to music. Does the song serve them, or do they serve the song? Are they the centerpiece, or part of a greater sound? With idols, is it that the quality of music is less important than its ability to emotionally connect the fans to the idols? I feel like there are endless possibilities, and perhaps that how much we as listeners and audiences prioritize certain elements is what shapes our tastes.

Exploring My Feelings on K-Pop

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Like all people not living under rocks, I’ve noticed the rise and sustained international popularity of Korean pop, with a fanbase nigh-unmatched in current times. I first caught wind of its global rise about ten years ago, when one Starcraft 2 tournament after the next would feature music videos of hits such as “Gee” and “Bubble Pop!”—Korean esports and K-pop seem to go hand-in-hand. But while there are K-pop songs I enjoy (and I can appreciate the creativity of BTS), there’s always been a sleek and shiny veneer that I’ve felt preventing me from embracing the genre entirely.

For a long time, I’ve wondered what exactly was the nature of my reticence. Recently, though, I read a 2019 article by a student journalist Yuzu I. comparing K-pop and J-pop (a genre I’m relatively more familiar with and enjoy more), they laid it out in a way that helped me to clarify my own thoughts and feelings. Essentially, the big difference between the two—or rather K-pop and the idol strain of J-pop that is so prevalent—is that K-pop is about presenting an image of perfection, whereas J-idols want fans to follow along in their growth like unpolished gems that their support to achieve greatness. It’s that “out-of-the-box” flawlessness that I think has always given me a slight pause when it comes to K-pop.

To be clear, I don’t think that the J-idol route is somehow more authentic; it’s merely presented as such. The two are different approaches towards the same end of getting loyal fans and hitting it big culturally and/or monetarily. That’s okay—they’re products designed to engender certain feelings in their audiences, like so much of entertainment. The ability to see your heroes improve and level up until they’re the strongest around is a hallmark of certain manga genres, and I can’t help but note that similarity to something like AKB48.

I find that the aesthetic of K-pop perfection is not limited to Korean pop culture or its music. It might not even be the primary driver of that aesthetic, as I often get a similar sense from more visually oriented forms of social media like Instagram, or even the way that video production has changed over time with Youtube. I understand why such things have occurred, and I don’t think it’s right to fault people (or even companies) for wanting to make their stuff look good. It reminds me of the concern among mothers about the pressure they feel from “Instagram moms” whenever their own lives are less than idyllic. I’m not saying that K-pop (or anything else) needs to show its performers behind the scenes screwing up and getting into fights—merely that while some can take positive inspiration from this totality of spotless presentation, I’m not naturally inclined towards that.

Unless, perhaps, you give it to me in the form of a cool cartoon.