Bias & Beyond

I have a feeling that this particular article is going to ruffle a few feathers out there. And honestly, I do not care. It truly needs to be said. The more people that fear speaking out, the more it gets ignored. So, here it goes. The K-Pop industry needs to take accountability more in terms of the influence that Black American culture has had on its music. Now, here’s my disclaimer. I am not American. I am British. I have American relatives (in fact, not including those in my family who remained in the West Indies, the majority of my family on both sides either resides in or was born and raised in the States) but that is as far as my link to the Americas goes. But in the U.K. we were influenced a lot by American media so while I wouldn’t profess myself to be some sort of expert on Black American culture, I have been immersed in it somewhat. Disclaimer over. What I will say is that there are a lot of companies out there who are willing to be “influenced” by certain aspects of Black Ame...

A fun little tidbit of an adventure happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I went to support my friend who was performing on stage for a K-Pop cover dance festival (shout out to you, Nat, please check out her YouTube channel here ). There was a lot of modern songs and artists that were being performed during the show such as MEOVV and ILLIT. Then, out of the blue, the intro to AOA’s Heart Attack started to play and my ears perked up. I looked at my friends and saw that they had the same surprised but excited expression that I had. THIS was the K-Pop I enjoyed! It was amusing to see that we were the only people in the audience who had this particular reaction. One of my friends commented that we had now become those aunties at parties who talk about how ‘old skool’ music was better compared to the new-fangled modern rubbish… but with K-Pop. We then started talking about what other artists would be great to see covers of and oh boy, we came up with some gems. Teen Top. Fiestar. B1A4. Rain...

As of the middle of 2025, all of the members of BTS had served their mandatory military service and were out in the wild, wild world again. ARMY (and I am sure a few media people as well) were crying, sobbing, and shaking in relief. I had a few people asking for my opinion on what I think will be the next step for them. As if I am some sort of oracle able to predict the future of what is going to be the future for one of the biggest names in K-Pop. I mean, I could hazard a few guesses but the reality is… I don’t know. When BTS really started making waves outside of Asia, they were still one of the very few to be doing so on a base level. But what made them and their promotional campaigns different was that they were the first to try and market to a widespread international market. At the time of their debut, companies were only using YouTube as a means of uploading their music videos (and the odd dance practice) on the platform, wanting to instead focus their video efforts on the homeg...

The world of social media is definitely not one to just be joining in without much forethought. First of all, I would like to ask you all- if you were in the world of social media marketing and wanted to have a K-Pop group to work with an influencer or influencer team, what would be the most important factor with regards to your decision making? Is it who the influencer is and what they are known for? Is it the number of followers they have? Or is it if the artist is a fan of the influencer? Or is it how the audience skews in terms of their geography and audience? The reason I ask this was due to the questions that I was having after seeing the influencers that Stray Kids were linking up with during their US/EU leg of their world tour. Now, Stray Kids are by no means a small time group. They are currently one of JYPE’s biggest successes, taking on sold out stadiums in locations such as the U.S., the U.K., France and so on. Their albums consistently chart on the Billboard charts glo...