KEY NOTES

0:00  DISCLAIMER

0:19  Whats up this episode?

2:04  Concepts vs. Themes

2:52  After School deserves more flowers.

3:53  HBCUs, BGLOs, and a German?

5:53  Todays album

7:03  The A3Day rating

An Album a Day is my exploration into the Korean music scene. This podcast will cover mainstream, indie and some underground artists within the scene and provide both factual and opinionated commentary. The biggest benefit to sharing my thoughts this way is that it will hopefully expose you to more great music and exploration of your own.

Todays single album could have easily been combined with at least one other project. After all, it is included in After Schools debut album. However, Id like to take this opportunity to tell you why After School was a breath of fresh air for female idol groups, as well as point out a moment when inspiration and acquisition blurred in their history. Lets get into Bang!, the ladys third Korean single, after the drop. 

Youre tuned into An Album a Day. Show start.

Hey yall, this is the song that put After School in a performance tier that other girl groups werent reaching. Let me correct that: other idol groups, period. While Billboard might not have called After School top performers in K-pop until 2016, they set the path for such acknowledgements on March 25, 2010 with the release of Bang! If youre vaguely familiar with After School by way of music videos, this is the one with the marching band theme. I have to get a little linguistically nerdy to clarify something about themes and concepts. Finally, a more concrete use of my degrees!

Although the words theme and concept are sometimes considered to be the same thing, they are in fact not. Concepts are much more abstract and present restrictions. Themes, however, are much more specific and associated with a piece of work. To tie this into the world of K-pop, weve got an abundance of themes that weve mistaken for concepts. Concepts can appear under a theme, just as themes can fall under a concept. It gets a little confusing here, so Ill give a general example and then a more specific one, as it pertains to our current group.

A general K-pop concept is the boy or girl next door. Common themes for this concept are: 

• School-aged, right down to the uniforms-as-costume look
• Field day
• Anything groups B1A4, Boyfriend, Apink and Girlfriend were pigeonholed into, for substantial parts of their careers 

More specifically, After Schools concept of sexy and confident female idols, whereas the theme changes from album to album. Sexy and confident female idols who can emulate the energy of American film Drumline, is what Bang! had coursing through its veins. Well get into that influence and more but lets go back to top performer stuff.

After School needs more flowers than they received for this single album. They upped their performance quality and introduced yet another group member, Lizzy. Id like to see you try to learn about percussion instruments, marching ensembles, and then hop onto a stage and perform a solid battery routine in insubstantial attire and heels. Too much? Not for After School. More specifically, they did not gain this musical skill in full battery -- you wont witness any member of the group playing marching cymbals, a row of tenor drums slung across their frame, or be frightened that a bass drum strapped across their bodies didnt drag them to the floor -- but committed to five months of practice with snare drums and executed a solid performance. Were not talking about the song just yet, you do realize this?! Kahi was so amazed by the 2012 film Drumline that its said that she wanted to create a similar experience for her girl group. I am entertained by this, given the long and occasionally troubled relationship