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Girls vs Boys- K-pop

I'm on a K-pop kick at the moment! It's time for another Girls vs Boys post and I'm featuring the Korean groups Red Velvet and GOT7.



Red Velvet are a 5 member girl group made up of Irene, Wendy (who is Canadian), Seulgi, Yeri and Joy (all from Korea). The name Red Velvet represents two sides to them- Red is the more girly, excitable side and Velvet is the more grown-up, toned down one. They were formed by South Korean entertainment company S.M. Entertainment (who are responsible for lots of the K-pop groups) at auditions over several years and debuted in August 2014 as a 4 member group with the single Happiness (digital release only). The music video for Happiness was very popular. In October that year they released their second single Be Natural featuring rapper Taeyong, who is now part of the K-pop group NCT.

In March 2015 Yeri joined Red Velvet and they released their first mini album Ice Cream Cake and singles Ice Cream Cake and Automatic. They brought out their debut album The Red in September that year, which debuted at No 1 in two South Korean charts.

Since then the group have brought out 4 more singles, Dumb Dumb (one of their most successful singles in America as well as Korea), Wish Tree, One of  These Nights and their latest, Russian Roulette. This year they released their second mini album The Velvet in March and their third one Russian Roulette in September.

This is Russian Roulette which came out on 7th September. I first saw the video on Pops in Seoul, the K-pop programme. We just got the South Korean channel Arirang TV in the UK!



For more on Red Velvet check out these links:

Official site (Korean/English language): http://redvelvet.smtown.com/

Official FB (Korean/English): https://www.facebook.com/RedVelvet/

Fansite (English): http://misskpop.weebly.com/red-velvet-profile.html

W interview (English): http://www.wmagazine.com/culture/2016/03/k-pop-girl-group-red-velvet/

Dazed and Confused interview (English): http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/33328/1/red-velvet-k-pop-interview



GOT7 are a Korean/international boyband since some of the members come from other countries. The band is made of up 7 members; JB, Jinyoung (both Korean), Mark, who is Taiwanese American, Jackson from Hong Kong, BamBam (Thai) and Youngjae and Yugyeom (Korean).

The group started off as the duo JJ Project consisting of JB and Jinyoung (then known as Jr) in 2012 and they were later joined by the others to become GOT7. They were formed by JYP Entertainment (another big South Korean entertainment company). In January 2014 they released their debut EP Got It? which was very successful, reaching No 1 in the Billboard World Albums chart. Their first single was Girls Girls Girls which came out in 2014. They released two more singles that year, A and Stop It and a 2nd EP Got Love.

GOT7 also sing/rap in Japanese and they released their debut Japanese single Around The World in October 2014. A month later they brought out their first studio album Identify (Korean language). To date they have released 5 more Korean singles, Just Right, If You Do, Fly, Home Run and their latest Hard Carry and 3 more Japanese ones, Love Train, Laugh Laugh Laugh and Yo Morigatte Yo. In addition to Got It? and Got Love they have 3 Korean EPS, Just Right, Mad and Flight Log: Departure and one Japanese one, Hey Ya. This February the group released their debut Japanese studio album Moriagetto and their second Korean album Flight Log: Turbulence came out last month.

This is Hard Carry which is from Flight Log: Turbulence and was released at the end of September. There are English subtitles on YouTube (click the caption). Yay!




For more on GOT7 visit these links:

Official Korean site (Korean/ English): http://got7.jype.com/

Official Japanese site (mostly Japanese): http://www.got7japan.com/

Official FB (Korean/English): https://www.facebook.com/GOT7Official/

Official Twitter (Korean/English): https://twitter.com/got7official

Billboard interview (English): http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/k-town/7430978/got7-new-york-tour-interview-kpop


Who is your favourite group? :)



Want more K-pop? Check out these links: 

This week's music video is DRIVE by Jay Park featuring GRAY: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2016/10/weekly-music-video_19.html

Last year's post on K-pop acts (it's almost exactly a year since I wrote this!): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2015/10/k-pop-acts.html

Pops in Seoul and Simply K-pop clips: http://www.arirang.com/player/Clips_KPop.asp

Dazed & Confused article on new K-pop songs: http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/33441/1/the-k-pop-songs-you-need-to-hear-this-month

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