A Newly Found Interest in K-pop

After our school's Homecoming game night against Bush High School, my friend Alex was playing Polaroid Love by 3rd generation K-pop group ENHYPEN in his car. It was an interesting experience because although I had already listened to Polaroid Love before (and didn't think highly of it back then), I felt that listening to that song that night brought forth a new music genre that I would fall in love with. In a matter of hours, I was hooked. I listened to Polaroid Love on repeat. I explored more of ENHYPEN's songs. Drunk-Dazed was another song of theirs that I fell in love with. I also explored more K-pop artists such as TOMORROW X TOGETHER (pronounced "tomorrow by together" and abbreviated as TXT), BTS, TWICE, Stray Kids, and more.

Since that night, I have fallen in love with listening to K-pop. Listening to music, now especially K-pop, is an activity I never get bored of. Of course, no one can realistically listen to music or do any type of activity for 100 hours straight. The point is, though, each time I listen to music feels like a whole different adventure. The addition of K-pop to my arsenal of genres has furthermore revitalized this feeling. I always find myself bopping my head to the beat of K-pop songs and singing the English lyrics. I even know some Korean lyrics to some songs by heart. What's more is that I even go out of my way to learn the Korean lyrics to songs like Anti-Romantic, FANCY, Ditto, and more on websites like Genius. Whenever I'm at school, the gym, a restaurant, etc., I often almost always start playing a song from my K-pop playlist. Since I play the Cello, I've also learned how to play a few phrases from songs like Polaroid Love and Ghosting on my instrument. In fact, I was thinking of doing a cover of a K-pop song, but the thought of it being a lot of work persuaded me not to pursue it.

One more reason why I love listening to K-pop is because it gets me involved with the groups and their respective members. What I mean by this is that I connect with some K-pop groups by learning more about each member, watching their performances or shows, following their social media, and much more. For example, my favorite group, ENHYPEN, releases almost weekly 30-minute shows on YouTube named "En-o'clock" that I love to watch. This series showcases the members trying different, fun activities such as playing paintball, trying Taekwondo, and visiting places in Korea. Another example of how I connect with K-pop groups is learning the official choreography to songs like Polaroid Love and Feel Special. Without listening to K-Pop, I wouldn't have an interest in the many groups as people and not just a group of people that sing. Listening to K-pop enables me to grow a connection with the groups that I listen to.

Currently, I have about 82 songs in my K-pop playlist with ENHYPEN sharing a plurality of the songs (13 of 82). I love them so much to the point where I bought 3 albums from them. 2 are from their DIMENSION: ANSWER album while the other is from their BORDER: CARNIVAL album. My bias (a person's favorite member) from ENHYPEN is Jake, a handsome and talented Australian-Korean dancer and vocalist. I don't think I see myself getting bored of listening to K-pop in the future. I promised myself to attend at least one concert in summer or fall 2023.

I'm extremely grateful to Alex for introducing me to K-pop, to Diya and Bharati for exposing me to more K-pop groups, and to Nidhi for helping me to dance to some K-pop songs.