Title Song - One is stronger than Ten

If you’re a listener of Western pop music, you might be used to the “whole album” with at least 10 songs. However, the rule is totally different in K-Pop. In this market, creating one brilliant title song is much more vital than releasing a regular album. Therefore, “mini album” with around 3 to 6 songs and digital single are more common in the world of K-Pop.

A successful title song can catapult a group into fame, and many successful title songs can push a group onto A-list. As a result, management companies tend to devoted themselves to one song with full force. To create craze with these title songs, there are two key points most commonly used in K-Pop:

Brainwashing Melody

Just like PR practitioners creating the “hook” for pitching media, there’s a “hook” in the song as highlights, which keeps repeating and haunting your mind. Let’s take “Gee”, the first K-Pop MV reached 100 million views on YouTube, from Girls' Generation as an example:

Now, what's left in your mind?

“Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby Baby”  “Gee Gee Gee Gee Gee~”

What on earth is the meaning of the lyrics? Why so many "Gee"?

It doesn’t matter. You’ll remember this song anyway!

English Lyrics

An important part to enjoy a song is to sing with the song, and people will love a song more if they are able to sing even just a little part of it. Since English is the universal language, you can always find some English words or sentences in K-Pop songs, and this is a big help for them to promote outside South Korea. Now, try “Fantastic Baby” from BIGBANG, which ranked on Billboard's WorldDigital Songs chart for 112 weeks and peaked as high as No. 3:

So, what did you focus on?

“Dance~ woo~~ I wanna dan dan dan dan dance” “WOW! FANTASTIC BABY!”

And also those catchy repeating words “Boom Shakalaka!”

What’s the meaning?

It doesn’t matter. You can sing some parts and enjoy anyway!