Thank You, Dreamcatcher (Korean Girl Group)
I will admit my biases upfront and have on multiple occasions: I miss the 2nd Generation of Korean pop music and believe it to be the best from an artistic standpoint. Of course I am nostalgic and sentimental for it not just because it was the era in which I entered the space, so of course it is my favorite. But also because it was a far more vibrant and flexible industrial space of artistic creation. Conceptually, stylistically, and genre-wise, there was far less homogeneity and overlap than we have seen growing steadily from the 3rd generation onward, drifting further and further away from what we knew before. With each soloist, each group having something closer to a unique sound, visual style, color palette, and identity in the previous two generations. Even those in the know like myself might struggle to discern one new group’s music from another in the current generation. Often giving the feeling that which being created lends more to the “art-as-industry” way of feeling an...
