I swear I’m in it for the music: A fangirl confession part 1 of 3478347829

I love listening to Japanese and Korean pop songs. That statement (should I happen to declare it out loud, not that I make it a point of randomly blurting out my music preferences in public) is almost always met with the expected reaction of “Haaaaa, bakit?” from people. My older sister, particularly, thinks I’m cuckoo for actually liking those songs that, as she puts it, “you don’t even understand what the lyrics actually mean.”

Which is why I’m glad for the sudden influx of Korean boy bands infiltrating the Philippines: while I don’t really listen to U-Kiss or BEAST (I’m more of a J-pop fan than a K-pop one), their presence in our country makes it easier for me to explain now one of the rather shallow reasons why I listen to Asian pop that isn’t Filipino:

Korean boy band U-KISS

Korean boy band BEAST/B2ST/however their band name is spelled

They’re incredibly good-looking.

Okay, maybe I exaggerate when I say incredibly. (Especially when referring to that member of U-Kiss with his hair in braids. Apparently he’s only fifteen.) Maybe they do look like lesbians as Mo Twister claims in his Twitter. Maybe I just have a penchant for feminine-looking men. Maybe I should have chosen another picture of BEAST to put up here. Maybe it’s a matter of personal taste and opinion. Heck, maybe it’s all of the above. But for me, they look good as a group, and that’s a huge factor thats got me hooked on their music. And I know I speak not only for myself, but for the millions of fangirls out there. (Yes, there are more of us. Muhaha. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.)

Oh, I know, I might hear some wisecrack comment about not seeing them when I actually listen to their music anyway. But allow me to rephrase. When I say they’re good-looking, I don’t only mean that they look good; the catch is, they also surprisingly sound good and dance good, to boot. Again, maybe I exaggerate; maybe it’s a matter of preference. But in a music scene where the Philippine definition of ‘boy band’ is either a collection of dancers (i.e The Maneouvers) or a group of men pretending to be boys while singing in deep voices and doing the occasional hip thrust which is supposed to look sexy but the sexiness is lost on me (yes, I am referring to the Masculados-- or Masculados Dos, whatever they’re apparently called now) for the Japanese and Korean boy bands to actually manage to combine everything into a package is a plus. (I know, we have XLR8 now--but that’s for another article. )

So yes, one of my reasons for listening to Japanese and Korean pop so much is because I find them attractive. I did say it was shallow, didn’t I? But remember, I also said it’s just one of the reasons. What are the others? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.


[ images used taken from Google.com and are not owned by Carbonatedpinoy. ]