Hyperfocus #6: Pursuing 'purity' in pop is futile, so stop. Just stop.

Pop music evolves, gobbling up inspirations and spitting out something new—and insisting it should be otherwise is counterintuitive and, frankly, foolish.

Bini is one of the leaders of the blossoming P-pop scene.

I wasn’t planning to do an Hyperfocus essay this suddenly and this late into the year, but I read

K-Culture with Jae-Ha Kim

’s post about a recent New York Times podcast. Now, I haven’t listened to it, but Jae-ha dug in deep enough to talk about the merits, or lack thereof, of essentially arguing that K-pop artists shouldn’t be singing in English. I suggest you read that, and her follow-up exploring BTS’ impact on the Korean diaspora.

But, yeah, it is interesting how, in the past couple of years, more K-pop artists have been releasing both English versions of their songs—it’s that version of Fifty Fifty’s “Cupid” that went viral, after all—as well as songs especially written in English, like Twice’s “The Feels” or the three songs BTS used to formalize its invasion of the American market.¹ Or, well, Jungkook’s Golden, an unabashedly Western pop record with loads of collaborators both on mic and off.

I suppose it is inevitable. K-pop has been a pretty big cultural force in the past decade. It’s interesting, how a genre that came together by gobbling up Western pop influences—and whose rise was accompanied in part by Western songwriters and producers—has pretty much taken over the world.² It’s really the doors opened by the Internet in general: the wider availability of foreign press, streaming services like Spotify, and online evangelists devoting every waking hour to telling the world about their favorites.

The difference is that it’s a little more obvious now that non-Western acts are breaking out. It’s not just the Koreans. This year is when J-pop finally started getting its act together and aiming beyond their domestic market, for instance. There’s a good amount of buzz coming from Latin American artists like Bad Bunny and Kali Uchis. Even Southeast Asian acts have begun getting in on the act, although I don’t think we’ve made the Big Wave yet, contrary to what some boosters might say.

This also means chatter about what (and who) should break out and what shouldn’t—like that New York Times podcast—gets a little louder, a little more obvious, a little easier to react on. Although interestingly, you don’t get this coverage whenever acts from countries of European heritage break out. And in any case, there still seems to be an effort to pigeonhole non-Western music in their own respective categories. You don’t see press drilling down on Max Martin, the man behind many of the biggest pop anthems of the last two decades, being Swedish.

It’s like they’re saying, “we like your music, but your music is not exactly our music.” Or maybe I am being cynical. But I’ll say it anyway: music was never pure to begin with. Pop music, especially, was never pure to begin with.

This goes for everything. I suppose a part of it is down to our relationship with the music we “choose”, and how we use it to signpost our tastes and personalities. Say, I don’t understand why there’s such a debate over whether Laufey is “real jazz” or not—but then I remember that this debate also raged when Norah Jones first broke into the scene.³ And even then, jazz evolved from the African diaspora in New Orleans—and that became one of the take-off points for rock and roll, which would then spread to outside of the United States.

By its nature, pop music has always borrowed from other styles and taken on influences from many places, in its pursuit of what’s clicking with the youth of the time and its bid to synthesize them into something that perhaps more people can get into. Artists from all over bring the music they were exposed to from whether they came from; listeners bring that music over to the places they go to and, with enough traction, can inspire other musicians to mix their own things into the pot. This is certainly true of K-pop, for instance: the foundations were being laid for decades through the influence of American culture and lifestyle (likely aided in part by the country’s military presence in South Korea), and later, by Korean companies adopting the Japanese “idol” system of training potential stars. It’s interesting seeing the end product of all this come to appeal widely to the people that influenced it in the first place—the Western markets now, of course, but before that, the likes of BoA and Rain holding their own in the notoriously inward-looking Japanese market. Is the secret sauce the good-looking stars, the music, the popularity of other aspects of Korean culture? Or maybe it’s the South Korean government’s investment in soft power⁴?

And there are many other examples of this happening, albeit in a smaller (meaning, the Americans don’t necessarily get this involved) scale. J-pop, of course, has had a devoted audience through the years, thanks in part to anime bringing pop groups and bands to a wider audience. The Taiwanese group F4 saw a rabid following across Asia thanks to the popularity of the drama Meteor Garden, where they first appeared. And here in the Philippines, we’re finally twigging to the strengths of the idol system and bringing the likes of SB19 and Bini to global audiences.

Being a Filipino, the evolution of our pop music is pretty fascinating, both in what’s changed and what hasn’t. Of course, stylistically, we have gobbled up a lot of what is presented to us, from the zarzuela introduced during the Spanish colonial period, to the swing and jazz brought over by the Americans in the early 20th century. The 1970s Manila Sound movement traces its origins to diverse Western pop scenes of the time—you can even directly connect, say, VST & Co. to the Bee Gees, or Hagibis to the Village People. The branching out of the later Original Pilipino Music (OPM) movement was aided in part by enterprising tastemakers⁵ bringing over foreign pop and rock records that would otherwise be difficult to obtain in the country, and further influences would come from members of the Filipino diaspora abroad, particularly our hip-hop being heavily influenced by West Coast rap.⁶

Despite all these influences, one would be hard-pressed to say that Filipino pop music is just a rip-off of Western pop. I’d say it’s the inherent musicality and romanticism in the Filipino language, which lends nicely to our pop folk and pop ballads, genres that remain popular to this day (often blended together, even) thanks to acts like Ben&Ben and Zack Tabudlo.

Of course, the themes remain distinctly Filipino. Societal emphasis on familial ties manifests itself in tracks such as SB19’s “Mapa”, written in tribute to the members’ parents. It’s also interesting how this all adds up to Bini’s “Karera”, literally a paean to slowing down—but very much drenched in the aesthetic of Korean summers popularized by Sistar.

Of course, not all is perfect in our side of the world. Some artists are quietly removing themselves from the OPM label, decrying it as old-fashioned and filled with middle-of-the-road ballads. Or perhaps they’re trying to not seem mainstream, ergo, sell-outs. I’m better than you, and all that. But in any case, Filipino music in all its influences are firing on all cylinders at the moment. Lola Amour just made their foreign concert debut in Singapore off the back of their mega-hit “Raining in Manila”. (It’s even been covered in concert by BamBam, while several Enhypen members have certainly paid attention.) Further out, the likes of Eyedress, beabadoobee and Jay Som are presenting under-the-radar examples of #PinoyPride.⁷ And I haven’t gotten to mention those who have long established their names outside of the country, like Broadway star Lea Salonga and one-time pop phenomenon Jake Zyrus, previously known as Charice before his gender transition.

Maybe someday a Filipino act will be big enough to elicit complaining think pieces about how it cannot be truly Filipino pop if they sing it in English—never mind that we were an American colony, and we are known for our relatively good English skills. But then, what we present now is the result of what’s around us. Unless you want us to stick to indigenous instruments? Something that’s easier to pigeonhole under “world music” and then be done with?⁸ What about K-pop? That’s a horse that has long bolted the stable. They have always borrowed from Western influences—and they don’t deny it—but the spin is different, presented through the prism of own values and preferences. (You can’t get innocent, flower-y pop in the West, nope.) And besides, if we’re going to be purist about this, should we only consider trot⁹—which developed during the Japanese occupation of Korea, with all the influences that go with it—as the only truly Korean pop? At least that’s sung in Korean, right?

Now, of course labels aren’t inherently a bad thing. It does help market things, categorize similar songs, make the discovery process easier. It does make for some interesting conundrums. I personally define K-pop as both “music from Korean artists” and “music targeted towards a Korean audience”. It does make for a blurry distinction. Where do the likes of Amber and eaJ, who first became popular as members of f(x) and Day6 respectively, fall? What about Eric Nam and Shannon, acts of mixed Korean heritage who also gained popularity in Korea? And what about HORI7ON, managed by MLD Entertainment (who launched the momentarily viral Momoland) but is made up entirely of Filipino members and is a product of a survival show aired in the Philippines?

Ultimately, my point is, music—and pop music specifically—will continue doing what it has done for decades: adapt and evolve. It will borrow from everywhere, it will synthesize everything, it will make something new and also say it’s a throwback to the past. That’s what makes all this exciting—the listening, the articulating, the navigating. I’m not even saying “fully understand the context to be able to truly appreciate”, although it doesn’t hurt.

What I’m saying is, the pursuit of “purity” in music, whether through textbook definitions of a genre, or the heritage of those performing it, is futile and pointless. So stop pigeonholing it heavily. Stop policing the parameters. Stop arguing too hard about whether it’s one thing or another. Just… stop. In the end, whoever listens to the music will make their own definitions, and forge their own relationships with it, and derive their own meanings from it. The same way I don’t think Koreans really call it “K-pop” because, well, it’s just pop to them, right?

And don’t get me started on who tends to say these things, and what they have done to folks like my ancestors.

1. I know this isn’t relevant to the discussion, but I have the urge to say that “Permission to Dance” is the worst of the three, by a long shot.

2. Of course it wasn’t always the case. I mentioned a bit about the early days on Hyperfocus #1, but let’s just say, for every Rain or Psy that made it through the United States before BTS did, there were many other groups that had to retreat back to the Korean market.

3. If we’re going to talk heritage here, Laufey is Icelandic-Chinese, and Norah Jones is, of course, the daughter of renowned Indian musician Ravi Shankar. I don’t think jazz can only be played by those who live in New Orleans, right?

4. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which deeply affected South Korea—I refer you to a subplot in the iconic Korean drama Reply 1997—and the popularity of first generation K-pop groups like H.O.T and Diva in other Asian markets, the government looked to extend its support to the country’s music scene through investment in infrastructure and promotion, as well as regulations protecting musicians’ interests. Before BTS became a worldwide phenomenon, certainly, cultural outreach programs have included exposure to K-pop.

5. I was particularly thinking of radio stations such as 99.5 RT and DZRJ, who forged a reputation for playing a wider milieu of pop and rock (respectively) tracks in their heyday. For instance, Ricky Gervais’ momentary foray into pop music may have been lost in time, but Seona Dancing’s “More to Lose” was a legitimately big hit here in the Philippines, embraced as a teen anthem in the 1980s, thanks to airplay on RT. To keep other radio stations from playing it, they deliberately misintroduced the track as “Medium” by Fade, or vice versa. Also, the advent of what’s loosely called “new wave” back in the 1980s has led to the rejuvenation of Filipino alternative, from pioneer bands like The Dawn leading to the current crop of indie-leaning performers like Unique Salonga and Gabba.

6. The most obvious example of this, of course, is apl.de.ap, who was born in Pampanga and was later adopted by an American family. There he would meet will.i.am, and the Black Eyed Peas were born.

7. But not necessarily making songs about being Filipino. But, again, that is a blurry line—and in any case, it suggests the only Filipino artists we should acknowledge should be the ones singing about Filipino concerns, which is very much the “purity” argument all over again.

8. There’s a reason why the term “world music”—loosely clumping together music that is not of a Western tradition—remains problematic with so many proponents. Just read David Byrne’s impassioned op-ed in 1999 for The New York Times.

9. Inevitably, trot and K-pop have crossed over.