Notes on K-pop • 29th December 2025

2025 ends with K-pop overlooked by success 'Of K-pop'

I was in Korea last month, and spent a lot of my time running around to have coffee with industry friends. One journalist and I were talking about the success of K-pop Demon Hunters, and what 2026 would bring, and I keep thinking about something he said to me: "Industry insiders think K-pop is a success when it's no longer Korean". This is not a new idea, necessarily, as it feels like everyone on the Internet has thoughts about what is or isn't K-pop, and K-pop's success, particularly in 2025....

Notes on K-pop • 22nd December 2025

In Brooklyn, Key celebrated a nostalgic, assured two-decades of artistry

Key's show at Kings Theater on December 10 felt like a celebration of himself, even in the moments when he had to catch his breath. Because, as he says, he's "not 18 anymore." But, as the night went on, it felt like the moments where he caught himself and acknowledged the length of his career were one of the main parts of Key's story as we entered Keyland. Having been born just six days after Key in a very fateful September, I've always felt an affinity for the SHINee member, and was looking f...

Notes on K-pop • 16th December 2025

Liveness, in 5 parts

It's December 2025, which feels like an impossibility, but this year is nearly over. We live in a period of immense darkness, and sorrow, and I am sending you all well-wishes for light. It was a weird year for K-pop in my opinion, though I'll get more into that in my true End of Year newsletter, but it was, at least on paper, a good year for me personally amid all the absolute terror of the world around us: I achieved two out of my six personal goals for 2025, and still hope for those four to...

Notes on K-pop • 27th November 2025

K-pop the idea not K-pop the institution reigns at the Grammy's

I'm in Seoul at the moment, so a bit slower to write than I usually am, but have spent a lot of my time walking through shopping centers and outside of stores blasting music thinking about what K-pop sounds like in 2025. The answer, I feel, is unclear, with no real consensus of hits: although historically I had found walking through Seoul to be a great way to hear what's trending, on this trip I discovered that I was more likely to hear music from a few years ago rather than this year. Even whe...

Notes on K-pop • 5th November 2025

Is the US K-pop Concert bubble bursting yet again?

“How often do you see a concert?” a friend asked me on Saturday (Nov 1) after I mentioned I was going to RIIZE's show that night. I had seen him earlier in the week, and had mentioned I was going to DC to Seventeen. The week prior, I had mentioned seeing StayC. I do certainly see more shows than the average person, partially because I get press tickets for some, sometimes writing reviews of said-shows but often not because I actually really detest most reviews. Once you take away the cost of s...

Notes on K-pop • 21st October 2025

Notes on K-pop Interview: AMPERS&ONE

The best time to interview a K-pop group is just around their second anniversary, in my opinion. They’re no longer so new that they stick to all their media training, but can relax a bit and answer questions off the cuff, but aren’t so daunted by chasing constant hit making. They have drive and energy, not yet worn down by the churn. The also have the intensity of their potential, and what will happen to them if they do not achieve that potential. They dance on the edge of a knife of success, w...

Notes on K-pop • 3rd October 2025

The K-pop Song of Summer of September

If you exist even slightly in the realm of pop culture conversations online, one of the biggest topics for much of August and September was the idea that there was no singular Song of Summer, or even many great contenders, though there were some. Depending on who you asked, "Golden" from K-POP Demon Hunters or Lewky's "I Have One Daughter" were the songs of summer, but both are atypical: "Golden" is a musical song performed by three singers who came together to perform as the fictional girl gro...

Notes on K-pop • 11th September 2025

Kai understands what women* want

On Saturday night, November 6, Madison Square Garden had two of the hottest shows for the girls and the gays in NYC: Lady Gaga was playing the arena, and Kai was playing the theater. Both artists know how to play to the crowd, and Kai that evening put on a master class during his KAION show on how to play straight into the hearts of the largely male-loving crowd. Before I go any further... I apologize. Please excuse the asterisk of the title, I couldn't come up with a less heteronormative frami...

Notes on K-pop • 2nd September 2025

Are we about to witness a K-pop live album renaissance?

This summer, it feels like all at once we saw live albums from across the industry: in July, BTS marked their return from hiatus with a several-year-old concert album from a date in Los Angeles in 2021. Then a few days later, Winner released a Best of Album featuring performances from Japan in 2019 and 2018. Then a few days after that, the Japanese K-pop inspired hitmakers XG released their live album. These are all great albums, bringing listeners into the moments of each acts' shows. But I ca...

Notes on K-pop • 18th August 2025

Notes on K-pop Interview: Kevin Woo

If you were a K-pop fan back in the mid 2010s, I bet you remember Kevin Woo in one of two contexts: he was a co-host of Arirang's English-language K-pop show After School Club, or you were trying to figure out if he was still part of U-KISS amid numerous lineup changes and their extremely good singles. You might, like me, still sometimes find yourself wondering what the hell they were singing about when "0330" featured the iconic line, "you are my r squared pi". You also might find yourself, an...

Notes on K-pop • 11th August 2025

Wonder, Her, Tear, Answer

Happy anniversary, BTS: Blood, Sweat & Tears, you're officially five-years-old today! Like any good book mom, I'm still thinking about you, and thinking about what I could have done differently: was the layout right? My tone? Did I spend too little time on one section, and too much on another? It's been a while since I woke up thinking about a potential typo that I was convinced had made it into the book, grabbed a copy, and let out a sigh of relief that it wasn't there, and then wondered where...

Notes on K-pop • 4th August 2025

2025 K-pop H1 in Review Big 4 Company Scorecard

According to The Washington Post, the sound of summer 2025 is K-pop. With K-Pop Demon Hunters winning us all over, the return of BTS confirmed now that all the members have returned to civilian life, and major acts touring US stadiums, WaPo say it's a great time to be a K-pop fan. Am I old, or does that not feel really like that's the case? WaPo is definitely going through it currently due to leadership change resulting in major impacts to journalism, so who knows if this is just an attempt to...

Notes on K-pop • 8th July 2025

Why 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' works so well

If you've watched K-Pop Demon Hunters recently, there's a likely chance that you're either listening to it right now, or possibly humming its soundtrack. If you haven't watched it yet, take a break and go watch before reading because I'm not necessarily talking about major spoilers but... You should go watch it! Released June 20, produced by Sony Pictures Animation and airing on Netflix, K-Pop Demon Hunters (aka KPDH) has become one of the biggest films of the summer, topping Netflix charts, an...

Notes on K-pop • 2nd July 2025

Stray Kids vs. the North American industrial concert complex

The US postal service's claim to fame is that "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays" its couriers from delivering mail. The Stays of Stray Kids, however, had plenty of heat, rain, and gloom of night amid the recent SKZ North American tour. The Dominate world tour which started last August in Seoul, made its way to the Americas beginning with dates in Chile in March. The USA and Canada dates kicked off in Seattle in May, and ended in Toronto last night (June 29). The six weeks...

Notes on K-pop • 25th June 2025

2025 Mid-Year Reading List

Like last year when I shared A reading list to clean up my life, my phone hates me right now because I have nearly 500 tabs consistently opened. But I did it intentionally (more or less), because I feel like by the time it comes to Spring I always forget what was going on in the first half of a year. So I saved the tabs of certain insightful and interesting reads from earlier this year, and even some from last year, and thought I'd share them with you. I'm going to organize this a bit different...

Notes on K-pop • 6th June 2025

Flexing the fandom self

It's June, which means it's the most wonderful time of year for BTS's ARMY: Festa, aka the annual celebration of the group's anniversary. Every year, the act has put out new and old content, streaming concerts, releasing special songs and concerts, commemorating each new year with ARMY. J-hope will be hosting a concert series in Seoul as part of this year's celebration; I saw him during his New York leg, and it was such a phenomenal concert. This year, of course, means even more: June marks the...

Notes on K-pop • 23rd May 2025

Notes on K-pop interview: Niel

I didn't tell him this when we spoke, but Niel, aka Ahn Daniel, aka a member of popular 2.5 K-pop boy band Teen Top, was the soundtrack to my college years. My mornings, in particular, because Teen Top's "Supa Luv" was my phone alarm that rang every morning. I loved the song, but I picked it because it's jarring in a way. It's 2025, and I still have a visceral reaction to it when I hear it, wanting to hit snooze. Teen Top's music was inescapable for several years: "Crazy", "To You", "Rocking",...

Notes on K-pop • 15th May 2025

What story is SM telling?

It's Wednesday night, May 14, as I write this. I spent the prior weekend in LA, and arrived home to NYC yesterday morning after zooming to a redeye from the Monday night launch party of Lee Soo Man: King of K-pop, directed by Ting Poo and now streaming on Amazon Prime. Although I'm featured in the film as a talking head briefly, I had not actually booked my LA trip to attend the premiere of the film. I had booked it because of SMTown, SM Entertainment's roster-wide concert, taking place on Sund...

Notes on K-pop • 4th May 2025

Schrödinger's discourse

Who is talking about K-pop anymore? Do you know? Do I know? Sometimes it feels like nobody, and everybody. I'm sitting here drinking coffee on Sunday morning and eating some amazing rugelach from my favorite bakery (if you're in NYC ever, try their babka I swear it's amazing) and thinking about how we're all talking about pop culture differently than we were a few years ago. It's not just a pivot to video like past eras; it feels like we've pivoted to parveness. "Pareve" meaning neutral in term...

Notes on K-pop • 6th April 2025

The Failure of Fantasy

Over the past few weeks, a few big major Korean entertainment-oriented stories have broken: At this point of reading, you're probably asking yourself, "Tamar, what is the connection here? Legal battles, pedophilia, and insensitivity seemingly have nothing bringing them together?" And that's a good question! But I think there is one tie: each of these situations reflect a fantasy that has been sold to audiences. And it's a terrible business model ultimately, even as lucrative as it may be before...