This weekend was a big deal for K-pop acts. The boy band BTS was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and the girl group Blackpink was part of the lineup of Coachella, and judging by anecdotal evidence on Twitter, was one of the highlights of the first weekend of the festival. International music has finally started to hit the American mainstream, and it’s not a fad.
The first real international music hit was probably Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012. It was treated as a joke act, or just another one-hit wonder. Nobody took it seriously that a K-pop act would actually have staying power and be more than just another novelty.
That attitude has started to change just a bit. In the summer of 2017, the biggest hit was the Spanish-language song “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi, and it was treated completely differently than that last big international hit. Prominent English-language artists wanted to get in on the action, with a remix being released featuring Justin Bieber, as a way for them to appeal to those who listen to Latin music and expand their fanbase.
K-pop had that tiny burst of popularity in 2012 with Psy and faded from the mainstream’s eye, however the interest in K-pop had only grown in smaller and niche circles. While our boy band movement had seemingly died down in the early 2000’s, only being momentarily revived by One Direction, South Korea’s was only beginning.
With the internet destroying barriers between countries hearing each other’s music, fanbases for K-pop were able to grow in the United States. Soon enough, their popularity could not be denied, with BTS winning the Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist in 2017 and 2018, and became the first K-pop act to perform at the ceremony in 2018.
Soon enough, more K-pop acts started gaining traction in the United States, most notably Blackpink, which is especially impressive because girl groups in the US are usually not as supported by radio and music outlets as boy bands are.
Whether this is just a phase or radically changes the music people in this country listen to remains to be seen. For now, it should be celebrated that we are not treating these acts and their music as silly, one-hit wonders for us to make fun of.
-Kerry Archibold