(G)I-DLE's turn into low quality shock and coarseness is unfortunately being rewarded.
They keep achieving greater and greater success with each successive release that leans more and more into crassness and explicitness.
It seems that's what the modern kpop fan wants.
Even IVE is collaborating with artists that spew cursewords.... "fuck this"... "bitch" that... (I so hope that was a misguided one-off, as I really love IVE).
So I fear you may be right. We are seeing an increasing move towards kpop becoming more in line with Western standard of pop mainstream. That's overtly explicit and laddened with expletives, coarse explicit sexual imagery of the likes of songs like WAP and crude fare of that nature.
It saddens me.
Many on the forum believe me to be either an old out-of-touch prude who needs to lighten up and get with the times, or an incelish miscreant who is really just threatened by the ostensible "powerful or confidant woman".
When in reality, it is not that I am objecting to female confidence, or empowerment, nor meaningful songs with themes of women's struggles against their mistreatment or victimhood. Nor am I against the inclusion of any sexual or suggestive content.
It is the coarseness and vulgarity I'm objecting to. The baseness I am objecting to.
To take the Soyeon penned (G)I-DLE song Wife as an example, since it's the song I made my posts about the last few days and have stirred such a backlash against me....
A song about women's feelings of being sexually mistreated pain and resentment felt by those who have a partner who sees them merely and sexual object or means to an end for their pleasure.
It's the difference between the song that Soyeon did write and produce: One that uses direct lyric language and an entire aesthetic and visual gestures throughout that coarsely references the explicit sexual act of swallowing cum, with licking and crude gestures to drive the whole point home.
And one that she could have wrote: One that breaches the same subject but in a more tasteful way that uses the lyrics to more subtle fashion to allude to the the idea of being made to feel sexually objectified, the feelings that evokes, the sadness and hurt, in a way that represents the same topic and feeling but in artful and tasteful way. Not literally having lyrics saying, effectively "I hate that you make me swallow your cum" with crude explicitly suggestive sexual pantomime by the members to push the provocative imagery home.
(G)I-DLE is choosing a road to tackle so-called empowerment themes in such a juvenile way. Anthems misguidedly trading on obsenity, crudeness, and explicity imagery rather than more thoughtful lyrical subtety and construction that could tackle the same topics and themes with more tact and tasteful subtlety that isn't wallowing in crude baseness.
Kpop has caught the "the more immodest/crude/profane the better" sickness that has degenerated much of Western pop music culture to the point songs like the aforementioned "WAP" are celebrated cultural hits, proudly embraced.
In the past, kpop, for the most part had not embraced that level of base sexual crudity and profanity. It's had its obvious sexual and suggestive imagery, especially during the sexy era, but even then, with some exceptions, it wasn't done in a way that was full-bore crudity. And kpop has never historically embraced profanity and curse-filled expletives a la Western rap in the way it is now.
My recent rant is obstensibly about (G)I-DLE's wife, but it's more broader than that. It's my emotional reaction to the onslaught from all sides in kpop where it is taking on the character and disposition of the worst of Western trash pop and culture. The crudity. The obsenity. The reveling in base profanity or elimination of any sense of sexual modesty or public standard.
It's a direction that saddens me and upset me. As a lover of kpop since 2nd generation, it was a world that avoided much of that for the majority of history. A wonderful world that stood for something different.
And now its losing that facet and character.
So I lament.
(Sorry for the diatribe brother.... This went way beyond your post.)
