This is entirely my (West Castle) argument. I think hyperpop is a genre that sings of confusion. First of all, from a formal point of view, it is distorted to the point where it is difficult to understand whether it is ‘the Tao’ or ‘the Beauty’, and even the first 40 seconds of development abandons a well-used theme and takes on a completely different development. The pitch of a cappella is twisted in various ways, and unexpected narration is inserted in the middle of the music.
This is also true from the author’s perspective. First of all, Sophie and Laura Res of 100 gecs, who are classified as representative hyperpop artists, were queer. The emotions they would have felt between ‘normality’ and their own identity while living in society as human beings would not only have been depression and emptiness of not being accepted by the system. You must have felt confused as you endlessly answered the question, “Am I abnormal?”
The same goes for the Digicore movement that emerged after the commercialization of Hyperpop. Artists who are making a name for themselves in digicore these days are usually young, right? They had to experience numerous turmoil during the period of emotional development, such as the Pax Americana shaken by the rise of China, Russia taking advantage of the chaos to declare war on Ukraine, the pandemic, and the loss of jobs due to the emergence of AI.
At the same time, we are facing a phase in which existing discourses continue to disintegrate. For example, it was in the 10s that the discourse on effort in Korea began to disintegrate in earnest. People who were rebelling against the older generation’s discourse that ‘no power is lacking’ are now in their 20s and 30s, and they are continuing their silent protest as ‘relaxed youth’.
Of course, if you start with the 3-po generation and the 880,000 won generation, you can go back to the 00s. But even at that time, the hope that I could live a normal life if I worked hard was strong. In addition, there is the Tangping generation in China, and the Satori generation in Japan. In the West, the meme “okay boomer” and the doomer portray a self-portrait of this generation.
The platform where most of these people stayed was TikTok. As you watch the short video (about 30 seconds or so) that includes music, the song changes like the rapidly changing theme of hyper pop. Distortion unique to mobile phone speakers inserts noise into the sound. So, Hyperpop resembles the platform they consumed the most.
Shall we summarize? First of all, the younger generation, who are more familiar with online grammar than offline, continue to face the reality of the destruction of the existing order during their emotional development period. The word that unites the numerous emotions that can be projected here is confusion, and the musical characteristics that hyperpop reveals are generally confusing. So the gist of my argument is that the emotion that hyperpop projects musically is ‘confusion’. In that sense, I think 시온’s [eigensinn] is the album that best utilizes the charm of the genre among the works that advocate hyperpop/digicore released so far in Korea.
If you look closely at track 1, “eigensinn,” you will see a synth sound similar to that used in jazz, running over a DnB groove. Then, around 40 seconds, it changes to a rhythm reminiscent of techno or house, showing a completely new aspect. The second half of track 2, “celeste,” shows a rock/metal style progression. There are also numerous other areas where you can see how high 시온’s understanding of this genre is.
If you want to understand the music of your friends these days, it would be a good idea to first listen to 시온’s [eigensinn]. Among the music in this genre, it’s a fairly mild and well-made album.