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5 Favorite K-pop MVs of 2022

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It’s once again time to spread the joy of K-pop to all my readers!  Here are my favorite K-pop music videos from 2022 in no particular order.

Familiar faces and old favorites

1. “Tomboy” by (G)I-dle

This girl group (pronounced “Idle”) had two big hits this year, both written by leader Soyeon, both with very different musical styles.  When I’m not listening to K-pop, my preferred genre is alternative rock, so “Tomboy” in particular really appealed to me.  I love the punk rock feel!  Both “Tomboy” and “Nxde” talk about breaking free from restrictive gender norms, which feels so empowering.  (G)I-dle is such a talented group and I feel like they have a lot to say.  I’ve been a fan of them since their debut and I’m so happy they had such a great year, especially after losing a member to a scandal last year.  I can’t wait to see what they do next.

2. “Waka Boom” by Hyolyn

Hyolyn, former member of SISTAR and one of the best vocals in K-pop, continues to show the younger idols how it’s done with this single for the music competition show Queendom 2.  Hyolyn’s fierce look and dancing combined with the inspiring lyrics make a big impact.  Plus, some rapping by the amazing Lee Young Ji, who is one of my favorite female rappers and just a fabulous person.  Check out her cover of Lizzo’s “Juice!”

3. “Blah Blah Blah” by Itzy

After killing it in Korea, Itzy moved on to Japan this year with two awesome Japanese singles, “Blah Blah Blah” and “Voltage.”  I love the energetic vibe; it really suits them.  Jpop is actually my first love, so I always really appreciate when groups put out great original Japanese songs (as in, not just translations of their Korean hits). I picked this one especially because I love the esthetic of Ryujin in that orange dress!

😍

4. “That That” by PSY

It’s a collab between K-pop royalty!  Suga from BTS joins PSY of “Gangnam Style” fame for this super catchy hit, staging a Wild West showdown. As always, PSY is just so much fun to watch.  Even my kids liked this one!

4th Generation Queens

This year also had an amazing crop of female rookie groups!  I couldn’t pick just one, so here are two videos that really stood out to me.

5.1 “Antifragile” by Le Sserafim 

Despite having a bit of a tough start, what with losing a member to scandal right after their debut, Le Sserafim had an amazing comeback with “Antifragile.”  I particularly loved this performance version, which really showcases their stage presence as well as former ballerina Kazuha’s awesome leg lifting choreo.  Just try to get ANTI TI TI TI FRAGILE FRAGILE out of your head!

😮😲🤯

5.2 “Attention” by NewJeans 

It is so refreshing to see a rookie group that actually looks like contemporary teenagers! NewJeans feels like a breath of fresh air.  No dyed hair or matchy outfits, just friendly interactions and natural athleticism.

Honorable Mentions:

5 Favorite K-pop MVs of 2021

Mei-Mei2 Comments

As always, here is my list of the MVs I had on repeat this year.

1. “Rosario” by Epik High

The year started off strong with this collaboration, which is hands-down my most-watched video this year. Epik High is a phenomenal hiphop trio whose playlists helped get me through lockdown last year. CL is the former leader of my favorite Kpop group, 2NE1, and Zico is the main rapper from Block B who has consistently been putting out bops with his own label. So when they say they are legends, they are not exaggerating.

There are so many great little details in the MV: Mithra Jin’s The Shining reference, Tukutz’s bare feet, the different hotel rooms. I especially love Tablo shooting with the remote at the end, and the way the MV is shot vertically, like a TikTok; these both speak to the song’s themes about fame and longevity/obsolescence. There are a lot of great fan theories about the MV as well, like that they are all actually dead and the narrow rooms represent graves, or that there is a criminal conspiracy going on between the characters. So many possible levels of meaning!

2. “Love Peace” by Tiger JK

Another legend of K-hiphop here, Tiger JK created a real piece of art with this MV (and the song features his wife and collaborator Yoon Mirae as well). It’s beautifully shot and the aesthetics are amazing, plus the song is so culturally relevant with its positivity about Asian cultures during this time of increased hate crimes against people of Asian descent.

Plus, how cool is this??

Love Peace GIF

3. “Lalisa” by Lisa

All of the solo debuts of the BLACKPINK members have been great, but Lisa’s MV really stood out this year. She can sing and rap, is one of the best dancers in Kpop, speaks fluent English, and has that natural swagger and stage presence that just can’t be taught. I love how the MV incorporates her Thai heritage at the end.

Also check out her performance video for her single “Money.”

4. “Advice” by Taemin

Long hair Taemin is back!! Taemin’s solo releases never disappoint and this one is no exception. Catchy song, intricate yet effortless choreography, amazing aesthetics: that’s SHINee’s multitalented maknae for you. And how does he look so good in that crop top?? He’s just unreal.

5. “Lilac” by IU

One of my favorite Kpop singer/songwriters, IU reflects on her career and the end of her 20s with this charming and slightly bittersweet song and MV. Her other releases this year “Celebrity” and “Coin” also had really excellent MVs, but I feel this one is destined to become a classic.

Honorable Mentions:

A Squirrel Obstacle Course 2.0: now with socialization!

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Last year I wrote about Mark Rober’s pandemic-inspired foray into backyard squirrel watching as seen in his YouTube video on creating a squirrel obstacle course. He’s now revisited this topic a year later to improve on the course, creating a 9-part challenge for the squirrels in his Walnut Heist video.

As I explained in my post, the original video explored squirrel behavior using two perspectives: ethology, the study of animals’ behavior under natural conditions, and behaviorism, measuring behavioral responses to stimuli. In his new video, he also explores a third dimension, studying interactions between the squirrels as they navigate the course.

Returning are our four experimental subjects, this time cast in heist movie-style roles based on how they approach the course: Rick (the acrobat), Marty (the hacker), Frank (logistics), and Phat Gus (the mastermind).

Phat Gus, who last time turned out to be a pregnant female, is still my spirit animal.

So the obstacle course is even more elaborate this time and even incorporates the heist theme with some Mission Impossible stations. It is of course fun to see how the squirrels tackle and eventually overcome all of the challenges, but I especially enjoyed seeing how the squirrels interacted when more than one of them was on the course at the same time. They exhibited plenty of social behaviors, such as:

  • Stealing bedding from each other’s nesting boxes
  • Copying a jump/strategy that they watched another squirrel attempt first
  • Shadowing another squirrel in the air duct maze from the outside
  • Getting in a small spat when two squirrels were in a small enclosed space together
  • Mating behavior (we’ll keep it G rated here)
  • Social grooming (one squirrel grooming another)

This made me realize that despite seeing squirrels nearly every day of my life, I didn’t know all that much about squirrel social behavior. So it was fun to learn more about that while enjoying such an entertaining video. But I definitely wasn’t surprised this time at how quickly the squirrels completed their mission, making this obstacle course look easy!

Good job, Phat Gus!

Engineering a squirrel obstacle course: Practical deterrent, entertainment, or science?

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Like many of us bored during the COVID stay-at-home period, YouTuber Mark Rober turned to a new hobby: backyard birding.  But Mark is a former NASA engineer (you may know him from his glitter bomb bait package video), so when he saw squirrels getting into his bird feeder, this new hobby spun out into an experiment in squirrel-proof bird feeders, which then (naturally) eventually involved into building a Ninja Warrior-style squirrel obstacle course in his yard.

Rober’s squirrel obstacle course

His YouTube video on the subject is highly entertaining, but what impressed me most as a scientist was…the science!  Did you know there was going to be science?  You might have missed it because it was so interesting.

His observations of the course begin by identifying his subjects: 4 particular squirrels were included in this study.  My favorite: Phat Gus aka Phantastic Gus, who turns out to be a pregnant female.  Speaking as another currently-pregnant female, Phat Gus is quite frankly an inspiration to me.

Phat Gus is my spirit animal

The study here really consists of two types of animal behavior science.  The most interesting to me is the part involving ethology, the study of animals’ behavior typically in their natural environment with limited interference.  This type of research was my primary focus during my undergrad; my career goal was to study animal behavior in zoos (spoiler alert: this is not my current field of biology at all).

For example, I would observe the manatees at the Columbus zoo, creating an ethogram of their behaviors (eating, sleeping, social interaction, swimming, surfacing to breathe) to see how much of their time was spent doing each activity, and what part of the exhibit they were doing them in.  This led me to be fascinated by the physiology of how manatees use their tails, flippers, and bodies to rise to the surface to breathe, even while sleeping.

File:Marine mammal animal manatee surfacing to breathe.jpg

Rober is similarly fascinated by the physics of how squirrels are able to land so cleanly even after being launched or dropped from his platforms: lowering their terminal velocity, turning in midair and pulling in/stretching their limbs, spotting their landings, and using their tails to adjust their trajectory.  He nicely ties this back to the evolutionary ecology of squirrels, considering it an adaptation to life in trees.

Spotting his landing

Also under the ethology category would be his initial pilot study of which type of seeds or nuts the squirrels prefer: walnuts, which he then used as his obstacle course final reward.

But why’re the walnuts gone?

The obstacle course itself is a great example of behaviorism, measuring behavioral responses to stimuli (typically in a laboratory environment).  This is the kind of research people typically think of with rats in mazes or Pavlov making dogs salivate to a bell.

The course includes rope and slinky bridges, a maze, spinning obstacles, a dropping platform, a photo op, angled steps, and a (gentle) catapult.

It only took the squirrels about a week to get to the end of the obstacle course, and they were eventually able to do it all in less than 40 seconds.

Rober also highlighted another important aspect of animal research: the safety of the subjects.  I appreciated his repeated comments on how he made the course humane so the squirrels would not actually be harmed.

Gotta keep these guys safe.

This video highlights so much of why I love animal behavior research.  Animals are endlessly fascinating to me, and I find interacting with them, even just by observing in a research setting, to be a rewarding educational experience.

Rober never did find a bird feeder that completely stopped the squirrels.  But in the end, he didn’t really care.

You keep doing you, Phat Gus.

5 K-pop Songs I Sing to My Kid

Mei-Mei2 Comments

One of the fun parts of having kids is being able to share your interests with them, things like Star Wars and superheroes.  I have been into K-pop for the better part of a decade, so naturally I am passing that on to my kid, too. Here are some songs that I sing to him (even though I don’t speak Korean haha).

DNA

by BTS

This song came out while I was pregnant, so my kid heard it a lot starting even in utero.  Though it’s a love song, the concept of a connection through DNA always seemed really fitting to me when talking about the relationship of a mother and a child.  Some of the lines translate to things like “We’ll be together forever, DNA” and “The DNA in my blood is telling me/That it’s you who I’ve been looking for.”  Since BTS is one of my favorite groups, I of course sing lots of other songs of theirs, but this one reminds me most of him.

Fire Truck

by NCT 127

This one is pretty simple: my kid loves fire trucks.  For a long time, he called them “wee ooh wee oohs” according to the sound their siren makes.  The chorus in this song simply goes something like “Whoop whoop whoop whoop fire truck.” I really have no idea what the song is actually about, but my kid thinks this phrase is pretty hilarious.

Lion

by (G)-Idle

This is the most recent release on my list; it came out last November, around the time my kid turned two.  One day when I was trying to entertain him, I sang the chorus and did some of the choreography and got the sometimes-desirable/sometimes-dreaded “More!” in response.  Now he asks me to sing the “Ba ba” song, and can even sing it a bit himself. The chorus goes: 

Bababa bababa bababa

It looks like a lion

I’m a queen like a lion

Ay-oh

Which is all just phonetic sounds and English words, including picture book staples “queen” and “lion,” so very easy for a toddler to pick up.

Lollipop

by BIGBANG and 2NE1

I sang a bit of this one to my kid one day, the part that goes “Lolli lolli lollipop,” and he thought it was funny, so I showed him the music video on YouTube and for some reason he absolutely loved it.  He’s never been interested in any K-pop video before, but this one is…some kind of special.

It was 2NE1’s first video back in 2009, so they are very young and the fashion is…interesting. I love 2NE1, they are my favorite K-pop group of all time, but this video is not good.  The best I can say about it is that it made me truly appreciate TOP’s charisma and visuals. But I guess I can’t be too harsh on it, because it was actually just a commercial for a cell phone. And it is colorful, repetitive, and dancy, plus it’s about candy, so I guess it would appeal to toddlers.  We like to put this on and dance around the living room sometimes when we are getting a bit stir crazy.

 

My Star

by Lee Hi

Ah, this one is a bit more personal.  I had just discovered Lee Hi around the time I was pregnant, and after my son was born I spent many, many hours in the dark of night singing to try to calm him.  After quickly running out of lullabies, I moved onto Rufus Wainwright, The Decemberists, and K-pop songs, and I happened to know a lot of the lyrics to this one from listening to it so much.  Again, it’s a love song, but it starts with the lyrics

넌 나의 STAR

넌 나의 SUN

넌 나의 MOON

Which translates to:

You’re my star

You’re my sun

You’re my moon

So I thought it was something sweet to sing to him.  I sang it to him so much that it became part of our nightly bedtime ritual: read books, put on sleep sack, sing My Star, turn out light, get in bed and sleep.  (When my husband has to put him to bed, he just hums it haha.) Nowadays, he cries when I sing it because he doesn’t want to go to bed! Hopefully it’s just a phase and I haven’t scarred him for life with this song.