K-pop girl group NewJeans / Courtesy of Ador
The latest B-side from NewJeans is not mean to appeal to a wrinkled old raver like me. I’m not going to learn the names of the girls in the video, be sucked in by the girl crush concepts, and spend loads of money on their merchandise and CDs. However, “Right Now” is a great track.
Many decry K-pop because of the associations with inauthenticity. A few people who I asked about this song told me that K-pop was not their thing and so were reluctant to listen to it. Yet there are only two kinds of music to my ears: good music and bad music. There’s good punk songs and rubbish ones. There’s country music that will make you cry and country music that will bore you to tears. There are many different genres, styles, approaches and cultures, but ultimately, there’s the music that I like and the music that I don’t like. This should not be read as if my subjective music taste is better than someone else’s. We are not here to yuck someone’s yum.
Nevertheless, this is how I understand the latest NewJeans track in light of my own experiences. It’s a way of communicating the past to the present while presenting a vision of the future. The track sounds fresh to a lot of young people in their 20s captured by the whole Y2K vibes and rewatching of "Friends" on streaming devices. To others it sounds like a nostalgic hit of the clubs and raves of a past that has almost been forgotten. Although people are often quick to say that culture merely goes round in cycles, we should remember that culture doesn’t necessarily repeat, but it rhymes. NewJeans aren’t repeating the past, but their producers are rhyming the sounds of yesterday with the vibes of today.
England in the 1990s was a place of pleasure, progress, and change. It was as if we were standing on the edge of tomorrow. A vast future of positivity and openness stretched out before us like an ocean without horizon. We projected our current state far into the future and imagined that our music, our clothes, our values, and our culture was unlike that which had come before. As humans, we had finally got things right. Gone were the days of colonialism and racism. Gay people were more accepted in society. The economy was growing. The summers were long and dreamy. The politicians young and guitar-wielding.
And the soundtrack? Of course there was the mainstream chart music. A host of bands dominating not only the small shores of the British Isles but also, to our mind at least, the whole world. Blur, Oasis, Radiohead, The Verve and the Stone Roses were the kings but they were joined by a wide-range of smaller groups providing anthemic hits like Reef’s “Place Your Hands” and The Boo Radleys’ “Wake Up Boo.” Beyond the pubs and the beer, the beer and more........