Program Notes:

The word “baby” is one of the most frequented lyrics in K-Pop girl group songs, but that’s also true for Beyonce, The Beatles, Prince, and Aretha Franklin. What differentiates K-Pop is the specific bubblegum pop sub-genre that exhibits the Korean concept of aegyo which is not so much of a personality, but a character that forces a cute, affectionate, and often humorous and flirtatious innocence—in other words, acting and sounding like a baby.

I sample interviews from Music Bank, one of Korea’s broadcast music programs, where each performing group recites a formulaic countdown and answers questions one-by-one in rapid fire succession before performing on stage. I take vocal snippets from love songs of women pining over men and obscure the gendered aural signifiers in a queering of a genre and society that falls behind in LGBTQ advocacy and visibility. From aegyo soundbites to bizarre and campy English lyrics, I used Meta’s machine learning hybrid source separation software to isolate vocals from some of the most iconic and representative songs in this particular sub-genre by the following girl groups within the decade of 2010 to the present: SNSD (Girls’ Generation), APink, GFriend, Red Velvet, TWICE, and STAYC. While scrutinizing the exploitation of these young women, the work also recognizes their individual artistries that continue to captivate their growing fandoms.

This is the first work of a series on K-Pop samples, the second written for singing clarinetist, electronics, and animation for Eric Jacobs called listen, boy.