#and also I don't think the Cheiron wave was much into royal road; so it's not the Nordic aspect

[arbitrarygreay]

History moves in spirals!

Japan looked to American pop through the 80s, leading to a heavy favoring of the Royal Road chord progression (e.g. Frankie Valli's Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You), as well as loving that disco. Mainstream Jpop, however, has often since lagged behind American music developments by 10-20 years.

As Kpop developed and expanded, they naturally first looked to Japan. So you get something like Kara's Honey from 2009, rocking that Royal Road progression.

Kpop, though, quickly wanted to expand to the entire global stage, and Jpop (going through the first phase of Idol Sengoku Jidai led by 48G) had quite the cringe image, including its old-fashioned music compositions. So Kpop shifted its primary inspirations to the US (and the Nordic nations, of course, but that was also following the US going to them first).

Irony now kicks in, because the US (and much of the rest of the world, too) is meanwhile raising an internet generation, who are now old enough to be working their way into professional positions, including music industry careers hitting the big time. In one prong, you have hip hop sampling and the availability of mass archives online driving a retro-pastiche resurgence, due to the young discovering the old and the old stoking that nostalgia.

The other prong is weebs. Weebs loving that anime music. Also, Plastic Love.

So here we come back to SNSD in 2022, hiring some Norwegians (and a Brit, apparently) to chase those hip and cool US pop music trends.

Which is Royal Road retro-pastiche city pop.

(For potential link rot purposes, this is SNSD's "Closer")

#snsd #girls generation #category: music #jpop #kpop #you could make a 'no they're trying to be dua lipa' argument; but that piano part is straight outta 80s jpop #and also I don't think the Cheiron wave was much into royal road; so it's not the Nordic aspect