K-drama
I have ridden almost every bandwagon in pop music.
Disco in the seventies, girl pop in the eighties, boy bands in the nineties, the Latin explosion around the turn of the century—name it, I was there.
There is, however, one bandwagon I have steadfastly refused to climb aboard: K-pop. Especially K-pop boy bands.
I simply don’t like the way they look. There is something about the K-pop boy-band aesthetic that I find deeply unappealing, uncanny, and unsettling.
Which brings us to the rectory kitchen.
I recently realized that K-pop had begun infiltrating the place before I even noticed.
First there were the Pepero sticks, a kitchen staple, so I bought a box without giving the people on the front much thought. I assumed they were BTS . . .
They were not.
And that is what makes the situation slightly ridiculous . . . Next to Madonna, boy bands may actually be my specialty. Give me a boy band I like and, within five minutes, I will know every member’s name and be able to tell them apart without consulting a chart. Yet put a K-pop group on a box of Pepero and I am clearly capable of mistaking Stray Kids for BTS—whom, to this day, I still could not pick out of a lineup.
This particular Pepero collaboration actually caused a small K-pop drama of its own in Canada. Fans discovered that one Canadian version of the Stray Kids packaging showed only seven of the group’s eight members. The company apologized after the mistake drew complaints from fans. I would never have noticed. I was still working on the more fundamental question of whether the people on my box were BTS.
Then came the Oreos.
Oreos are essential with my coffee, and lately the version I keep encountering is this . . .
So now even breakfast—or whatever you call coffee and Oreos—has become K-pop adjacent.
And then there is this album . . .
I do not particularly like BLACKPINK either. I just happen to like “APT.” a lot.
And perhaps that is the real irony here. I keep insisting that K-pop is the one pop phenomenon I will not succumb to, but considering the evidence accumulating around the rectory, I may already be on the bandwagon.
I’m just pretending I’m walking beside it, not riding it.