We’ve all had a heavy week, so let’s try to enjoy some music together.
Listen to last week’s episode here:
Escucha”Almost Christmas” en Spreaker.https://widget.spreaker.com/widgets.js
News:
So here we are again for another week! I’m Karen and this is What the Bop?! The first block was [list songs] yeah, I was really surprised that that was legit the YMCA song, but that wasn’t bad. I giggled the first whole listen through but not bad, EXILE not bad. (I would just like to note that this did not go as planned, and the news that follows is somewhat how the audio goes)
The biggest news of this week is that Kim Jonghyun of SHINee committed suicide. On December 18th at 6:30 pm Korean standard time, the Gangnam police dept. found him in his apartment that he had rented separately from his mother and sister. He had lit a coal on his stove and had succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. While he was alive at his home, he passed away from complications due to the poisoning in the ambulance. Despite the many attempts to revive him, he still died.
Kim Jonghyun had texted his sister several times in the hours leading up to his death, including his last words. It took the police two hours to get to his house. His sister called the police and told them that her brother had sent her text messages leading to the fact that he was going to commit suicide, and it still took them two hours until they reached him.
He had been suffering from years and finally lost his battle with depression. But don’t think this is soley due to his work environment. According to records, he was getting treatment. However, in Korea mental health has a huge stigma. In fact, many people commit suicide in Korea. It’s only second to Japan leading the world in the amount of suicides per year that people die from. Both countries and many like it need an overhaul of their mental health systems and it NEEDS to be addressed.
The female suicide rate in Korea is the highest compared to other OECD countries with 15/100,000 being from suicide. Male suicide is the third highest with 32.5/100,000 being from suicide. From 1986 to 2005 the rate of suicide increased 244% for men and 282% for women.
According to a study, SK experiences a surge of suicides after the death of celebrities. The studies controlled for the potential effects of confounding factors, such as seasonality and unemployment rates. Celebrity suicides still had a strong correlation to the effects of increased suicide rates for nine weeks. The amount of media coverage also had a hand in how high the rates went. The more the coverage the more the suicide rate went up. The less coverage, the less the rate rose.
BLOCK 2
Hey I’m back and that last block was [list off songs] now on to the news!
Uhm Jung Hwa, the Madonna of K-Pop has made a triumphant return in her 24 year long career with her 3rd mini album, “The Cloud Dream of the Nine Part 2” and it’s title track, “Ending Credit” released a music video last Tuesday. It is phenomenal, so don’t forget to check it out, and don’t forget to breathe. Stay hydrated and oxygenated, my friends.
Astro [seem to be] having a fanmeet tour in February, and I shall be poor and bitter, don’t touch me. It’ll happen in February and they had several dates. However all traces of this news seem to have disappeared from my radar and I can’t find anything else. I very clearly remember it being scheduled for like, the first week in February. Who knows. I don’t. I’ll just chalk this up to ‘rumor’ until I can find it again but I know I saw it, there were like five posts.
Dreamcatcher will be embarking on a European tour come 2018, this actually does have solid dates and cities. And coincidentally takes place in February. It’ll be from the 14th to the 25th and it will take places in London, Lisbon, Madrid, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris. The tour is brought to European fans my MyMusicTaste.
New-Ace are a boy band that have teased their member images for a while, and if you’ve heard of them it’s probably because of member Jion (he’s very unique and one of my friends adores him) they decided to change their name because it’s too similar to an already-debuted group and they will be releasing the new name at the end of this month.
Billboard Japan has released it’s year end ranking list for the top artists of 2017 and the top 10 are:
- Hoshino Gen
- Keyakizaka46
- TWICE
- Nogizaka46
- Children
- AKB48
- ONE OK ROCK
- RADWIMPS
- Namie Amuro ❤
- Yonezu Kenshi
If you’d like to take a look at the other lists of top albums, singles downloads, you can go look at the official website.
Jin Akanishi has released his latest solo album, “Blessed.” Check it out now if you can!
Ayaka and Daichi Miura, two of my favorite artists are teaming up for a collab single titled, “Heart Up!” The single will be the theme song to a major commercial campaign to begin airing in april. The song will be produced by takeshi kobayashi and ayaka.
OG Members of Morning Musume and Hello!Project alum have gathered together for 4th generation MM member Rika Ishikawa’s wedding. She married pitched Ryoma Nogami of the Yomiuri Giants.
Listen to What the Bop?! every week on Tuesday at 7PM Central US time.
Ms. ThugBear 