I would like to understand K-pop better, as I believe it is very popular with the kids. That sentence is a hard-working one: it introduces the information that I have spent this week watching the new Apple TV+ show KPopped (from Friday 29 August), while suggesting I am too old to have any hope of success. But it’s nowhere near as hard-working as a Korean pop star.
This battle of the bands-style show aims to raise awareness of K-pop in the west like it’s lymphatic filariasis or something. The format reminds me of PE lessons. You know how gym teachers split groups of friends up, so they concentrate? Here, Korean boy and girl groups such as JO1 and Blackswan are split in half. Each half works with a famous western pop artist, re-tooling their best-known song in K-pop mode. The resulting performances are voted for by the studio audience, and the winner gets – well, nothing. An injection of relevance.
The show is produced and hosted by rapper Megan Thee Stallion – with Gangnam Style’s Psy as co-host. I have spent five years trying to understand why Megan Thee Stallion is called that. Whenever I ask the internet, it assumes I’m questioning the horse bit. (She is statuesque, like a stallion, which seems self-explanatory.) It’s actually the Elizabethan English in the middle I’m intrigued by. Thee? An archaic form of address used in place of “you”? I guess no one wants to get pronouns wrong, so they leave it alone.
The format is confusing, too. Each episode has two famous western artists competing against each other, supported by one mega-famous K-pop band, who are battling themselves. So, Megan Thee Stallion v R&B veteran Patti LaBelle, each with half of Billie. Or 80s stars Taylor Dayne v Vanilla Ice, each teamed with half of girl group Kep1er. But when I jump straight to the Spice Girls ep, it turns out to just be Mel B and Emma Bunton. Rather than splitting up – too triggering? – Scary and Baby both perform with both groups, working against the show’s competitive logic. Also, watching a studio vote after the fact just isn’t that exciting.
What I am gripped by is the balance of power in the rehearsal rooms. The globally popular K-poppers have the grace and uncanny communication of synchronised swimmers. Perfect features, skin like peach blossom. Drilled within a hyper-exacting star system, they dance like a murmuration of swallows, or a handful of diamonds thrown in the air. The westerners, by comparison, look like dead weight. They dance like Rocky Balboa. They move less often than a 90-year-old in rent-controlled property. You can see their aura draining.
“Finally, we’re having a laugh!” Mel B exclaims, pulling out an intentionally hapless cartwheel in rehearsals, to polite titters. Some of this is to do with age, but not all of it. I love Emma Bunton, but can’t see her popping or locking. Even Thee Stallion, no slouch, looks almost static. I’ve never seen anyone look less impressed than Colombian singer J Balvin being shown around a South Korean market. He’s worried, is the thing. He looks even more dejected once he gets into rehearsals with boyband Ateez. “Shall we show him an easy one?” one of them says, in Korean.
The problem is that our pop stars are, above all, salespeople of their own charisma, which they cannot subsume. It’s an existential nightmare for them to share the stage. Korea, like most Asian countries, values group harmony, cooperation, respect for elders and social hierarchy. You’ve never seen such polite celebs. “I think we will win” is the sassiest they get. Our performers are like badly behaved schoolkids, acting out because they’re falling behind in history.
I understand K-pop now. Impeccable choreography, maximalist production and millions of ideas. But it’s still our guys I’m tuning in for, to see who handles the pressure least well. Will Boy George say something cutting? Will TLC cause an international incident? Will Vanilla Ice get detention for smoking? Who will these legends prove themselves to be, when they’re not the most popular person in the room? KPopped isn’t thee best talent show ever created, but it may be thee most revealing.
