Chung Ha’s album reflects K-pop’s broadness
K-pop: Korean popular music emerged in the 1990s by drawing inspiration from Dance-Pop, Contemporary R&B and Hip Hop. Later on, music groups started to form bands and singers as idols tailored towards teen audience. The entertainment agencies started to grow as more bands were formed. The K-pop genre not only about the music itself but concentrates on the performance as well with glamorous music videos, purchasable merchandise elements and a whole new level of physical albums with posters, photo cards, CDs and small editorial magazines or introduction books about the band. Music wise, they do not lack of any genres and styles, they emerge together many of them.
Chung Ha: She is a South-Korean singer, songwriter who started out in this industry through a reality show competing against 100 other girls. She continued in the K-pop girl group I.O.I, but some years later she branched out with a successful solo career. She released episodes like Hands On Me, Offset and her debut long-player Querencia.
Querencia: Chung Ha mentions what the title and the album means “Querencia is a place from which one’s strength is drawn, where one feels at home, the place where you are your most authentic self.” This album consists of 21 tracks and 4 very different sides to it. The glamorous music videos and the featured dance break sections reflect on the K-pop style visuals as well. She wrote this album during COVID-19, that is why her strength was this album, this is where she felt most like herself. For a more global experience she is not only using a Spanish word for the title, but she features Latin-American artists on the album. This is an album that blends many different genres together, she was not afraid to experiment new things through writing the tracks.
Panna Ingula. (n.d.). kpop [Pinterest Board]. Pinterest. https://pin.it/7DH1ao2mr
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