(KPop Memories) After Through the Night, no nonKpop song will ever win a Grand Prize, ever.

Puyi, the last Emperor of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, was deposed on 1912 as the Empire dissolved.

There were a lot of things which I won't recount, but long story short there were still disorder in 1917.

A warlord named Zhang Xun decided to seize power by putting the ex-Emperor back to the throne, with himself seizing all practical powers.

He actually put the plan to fruition in July 01, 1917, while the West was busy fighting the Great War. Puyi was reinstalled to the Throne and became Emperor again.

However, other warlords did not tolerate Zhang's scheme since he had been made the Executive Prime Minister, basically the dictator of the country who could do whatever he felt like on the auspice of the Emperor.

They ganged up on Zhang, who lacked the power to defeat them all and had to run away, and basically that ended Puyi's second tenure as an Emperor after 12 days. Puyi would do some other interesting things in Japanese-ruled Manchuria later but that is another story.

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KPop's greatest moment of retrenchment occurred on January 10, 2018, probably the highest point of IU's life as well

When KPop's Greatest Anachronism finally won her first Grand Prize, which had been elusive to her for all of her life. (At that time Melon was not considered to be a serious award.)

The last time a non-KPop song won a Grand Prize was in 2010, when 2AM's "Can't Let You Go", a ballad written by Hitman Bang (yes, Bang Sihyuk of Hybe - at that time 2AM was under Big Hit) won the Grand Prize at Golden Disk.

At that time 2AM had Japanese ambitions although I don't think it went anywhere. Plus, although it was under Big Hit, popular perception led to it being under JYP, so it was kinda accepted although it was a nonKpop ballad.

Ever since, the winners of Golden Disk, as of today, had these many views

2012 (no 2011 because they wanted to exclude the nonKpopper IU) - SNSD - the Boyz - 289M

2013 - Psy - Gangnam Style - no need to list

2014 - Psy - Gentleman - no need to list

2015 - Taeyang - ENL - 221M

2016- Big Bang - Loser - 234M

2017- Twice - Cheer Up - 486M

2019 - Ikon - Love Scenario - 564M

2020 - BTS - Boy with Luv - 1.4B views.

All of the Golden Disk digital winners (and the winners of every other Grand Prizes since 2010) could be called Kpop Songs. (Cho Yongpil's Bounce is a special case but he did release a Japanese version of it, and also he released a song "Hello" with Ok Taekyeon(2PM) in Japanese, so it can be called a Kpop song. Plus he did extensive work in Japan so his contribution to Kpop is sizable.)

Except one song - Through the Night.

It is still less than 100M views as of now , 99,442,000 views after 5 years

How can a nonKPop song win a Grand Prize at the height of KPop boom, and a nonKpopper gets to lord over all these singers who are all Kpoppers, is a question I have explored for all of my life but at that point her lifetime struggle to undermine Kpop reached the zenith.

Her lifetime effort to destroy KPop was finally recognized and she finally got to strangle Kpop .

However, that was going to be the swan song of the nonKpop era.

What made her change her mind to stop undermining Kpop and entering the KPop world is hard to determine. Perhaps she was thinking like the Protestant Duke of Navarre, Henri, who agreed to convert to Catholicism in order to be allowed to be the King of France. After he had his first Mass in the Notre Dame Cathedral, which has burnt down a few years ago, he said Paris is worth a Mass.

But then she released her first Kpop song in her life, BbiBbi, in Oct 2018 which has hit 236M view as of now, although it is now hanging in the lower 90s of the ranking of the most viewed Kpop videos oever and would probably be pushed out when BTS releases its nest album.

A nonKpoper hitting 200M+ views makes the singer a Kpopper.

Ever since her next Golden Disk winners, Blueming (137M views) and Celebrity (127M), have hit over 100M views , making her kind of a Kpopper.

It will be very unlikely for a nonKpop song to ever win a Grand Prize, because nonKpop songs will never really get a traction to win a Grand Prize in this kind of environment. (How Through the Night got to win is another long story which I will save for another time.)

Quote from bbgc

Who made you the Pope of K-pop, and decide what/what not is Kpop?

TTN is what 3rd or 4th on the longest charting songs on Gaon digital, Koreans have spoken clearly their opinion about it.

Kpop is an industry and not a genre - it includes everything from rock, hiphop, ballad, folk, R&B etc., at best a visual performance aspect can be deemed a criteria, but most of the B-sides don't even have that.

So your classifications are meaningless - you are not going to certify which is a valid grand prize and not, whichever suits your conspiracy theories, like MAMA - obsessed with groups and international acceptability.

Nobody in their right minds can ever deny the impact/domination of IU in the K-pop industry.

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It is not easy to determine what is a Kpop and what is not since no one really set the rules, but generally speaking if a song doesn't have a proper English title an does not have the views (100m view in at most 2 years is a good threshold) it is usually not considered to be a kpop song

Unlike most KPop songs, TTN is not supposed to be sung in languages other than Korean, which makes it less Kpop.

Quote from MassiveKpopFan

Since when are Blueming and Celebrity kpop??

When they did hit 100M views (although not TTN because it failed to hit that mark within 5 yeas).

Celebrity is also not composed by Koreans, which kind of makes it Kpop

Quote from BlackpinkHouse

I dont remember what Blueming sounds like but Celebrity sounds like pure Kpop to me...it even has a beat drop and dance break!! One of IU's best songs for sure.

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Celebrity is Kpop

Done by the same people who did OhMyGirl's Dolphin.

Quote from bbgc

There were go again.

Is there an institutional or consensual definition of what is K-pop?

I see a variety of opinions, that's all.

WhyKnock :s weird opinion is that of it doesn't have an English title, then it is not K-pop.

What's your parameters?

In any case MMA, GDA, MAMA are more credible judges and they have recognised Celebrity, Blueming as K-pop , that's all there is to it.

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No one has ever defined what is Kpop and what is not KPop, but in the old days Korea-only songs were only released within Korea with little exposure outside of Korea.

TTN is probably last song of note which was released that way, without too much foreign attention. Paul Kim was popular in Korea but few people outside of it know him, so he is definitely not KPop.

Virtually all dance acts have foreign ambitions so their releases, big or small acts, are released outside of Korea while few K-ballad news is released outside of Korea.

The game has changed a bit after the BTS craze, and even trottists like Lim Youngwoong give English titles to their songs and try to garner some non-Korean fans if they can. So it is inevitable that virtually all songs released from Korea will probably be Kpop-ish whether it belongs to Kpop or not.

Which , again, makes TTN the last non-Kpop hit, ever, since no song in Korea will ever be free from Kpop influence again even after the KPop craze might subside.