In our cover video I played the role of Ailee. Having a background in classical Opera, K-pop is an area that I am unacquainted with. Through the process of recording this cover, I learned about many aspects of the Korean language as well as K-pop’s production style.
The first thing I noticed was that Korean has many more open vowels in comparison to English. This allows their vocals to have a cleaner and more resonant sound especially in the high notes. This may attribute to why K-pop tenors often sing much higher and less strained than tenors in Western pop music. Another thing I noticed about K-pop music through recording this song is that their production style puts a much heavier emphasis on the solo artist in comparison to Western pop music. K-pop often has many layers of supporting harmonies that are not easily distinct from the artist’s voice, thus creating the effect of the artist having a richer voice. I imagine that this method is done because in the K-pop industry it is more beneficial to boost the popularity of an idol than of a single song.
In the original video, Ailee danced while lip syncing to the music. Although I didn’t dance in our cover video, I underestimated how difficult lip syncing was. When I watched K-pop music videos and saw K-pop idols lip syncing so aesthetically I thought I could do that too. Now I realize that lip syncing is a lot like dancing but on a smaller scale. It is a sequence of choreographed moves with an emphasis on facial expression.
Making this K-pop music video taught me many things that I would not have learnt by just reading a textbook. Sometimes you have to experience it first hand to know how difficult something is.
AILEE 