Stan Ontology

Stan Ontology

By Michael Davin and Claudia LoMusicMusic Commentary
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Stan Ontology episodes

  • 1 – NCT U - The 7th Sense

    We're back! And there's no better way to kick off season 2 than with the MOST confusing of boy bands, NCT! Watch the

    Korean music video, the performance MV, or the live stage performance then hop back and join us. Onward to notes:

    • Lee Soo-man, 2016: Neo Culture Technology, the business presentation that was also one of the places where this new group was announced?
    • That meeting also includes snippets from a pre-debut version of The 7th Sense, with some notable changes like the overall mix, aesthetic, Haechan in the vocals, and the inclusion of Hansol, who quit SM before NCT's official debut.
    • The NCT member timeline chart so confusing it got removed from Wikipedia for violating accessibility guidelines. Here's its
    • Or if you prefer, there's the Venn diagram version (courtesy Twitter) which is no less unreadable.
    • English-subtitled video of Baekhyun and Sehun (EXO), and Taeyong and Jaehyun (NCT)'s stories of being street-cast. (MBS, KBS and SBS are three of the biggest TV networks in South Korea.)
    • And here's a video of NCT 127 desperately trying to explain NCT.
    • And as I was digging for those videos, it turns out that as late as the Superhuman promotions (2019, three years after NCT debuted) they're still wearing nametags on the talk shows.
    • How good are NCT? Well. Here's the Produce 101 trainees covering it.
    • Here's a clip from the actual show itself with the trainees' reactions to their fate.
    • Shotaro covering Taeyong's part in The 7th Sense, a last-minute sub for him after Taeyong was injured.
    • On that final note (justice for Winwin), here's the RainbowV special project choreo for Billie Eilish x Khalid's Lovely.
    • The s**t kingz official site link to their choreography (as the collective group).
    • I'm fairly certain this is the exact moment in Make A Wish's choreo that regs is talking about - let it run for about 15 seconds.
    • The other NCT songs we love: Touch (2018, NCT U), Superhuman (2019, NCT 127), Make A Wish (2020, NCT U), Cherry Bomb (2017, NCT 127)
    • Both NCT 2020's Resonance pt. 1 and pt. 2 (which was the repack) sold a certified million copies!
    • The not very good 23-member dance roundups: 2020's Resonance and 2018's Black on Black.

      • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates. If you have any questions you'd like to send in, direct them to us on Twitter!

      1 hr 52 min
    • The Stan Ontology K-pop Roundup of 2020
      What a year it's been

      It's here! It's finally here! Listen to Stan Ontology crown the Taemin Of The Year, the peaks and nadirs of NCT, celebrate the output of some special soloists, revisit the Summer of Disco, and finish with a warm hug and a staggering, wild-eyed prophetic track about the vibe of this bizarre year, covering all of our favourite stuff in K-pop along the way.

      You can listen to all of the tracks that we discuss a listen via this end-of-year playlist - we've picked our favourite performances of these songs, but as always, there's a wealth of choreo vids and alternate versions we leave for you to find, dear listener.

      • For more crop-topped sweater goodness, here's TXT with Blue Hour.
      • Please mentally overdub Claudia saying "a notoriously controlling group" with "a notoriously controlling label"; she meant SM Entertainment, not SHINee.
      • Behind-the-scenes for That One Shot in the Naughty MV.
      • NCT Resonance also gave us Hendery with cat ears, the supreme project
      • weEEeeE baaAllinN'
      • Charlie Puth - Attention
      • We say "dribble" a lot, huh? May I propose that it was a dribbly year.
      • GFriend - Fingertip
      • Say it with us:  ✨ r e v i s i o n i s m ✨
      • Actually I will leave it to you to imagine what "rice withdrawal" feels like, the context being "when I first left to go to uni in the US" - Claudia.
      • Shaun - Way Back Home

        • Remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest updates. See you in 2021!

        2 hr 7 min
      • PSY - video live reactions

        An unenviable record of that time we decided, for some reason, to just blast our ears with nonstop PSY for a long time, edited down for your listening pleasure.

        A warning: the MVs for Gangnam Style, Gentlemen and Daddy all feature rapid flashing lights or rapidly flashing cuts.

        In order: Gangnam Style is at (1:53), Gentlemen at (6:54), Daddy at (11:11), Hangover at (16:00), and New Face at (22:40).

        • I heard Gangnam Style as I was writing up these notes and got flooded with a full-on unbidden memory of high school, a time I try to blot out in my mind.
        • In defense of the visor, it's a very practical piece of headgear especially when you want shade but also don't want hat hair.
        • And, yes, the gag or the point of the song in Gentleman is identical to PSY, but more obviously mean, leery, and inappropriate.
        • I supposed "that thing with the tteokbokki" is the closest to "that thing with the horses"?
        • CGI adult face on baby body will never stop being terrifying
        • I'LL BE YOUR CURRY YOU BE MY RICE
        • If you wanted to see the stage version of these songs, I've got you covered. Here's Gangnam Style at the 2015 MAMA show.

          • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates. If you have any questions you'd like to send in, direct them to us on Twitter. See you next time for our end-of-year roundup!

          28 min
        • 11 – BTS - Blood Sweat & Tears, pt. 2

          It's, incredibly, still here! Refresh your memory with the music video, the stage performance (this one's got good fan chants), or the dance practice.

          • SparkNotes for Demian, but actually.
          • Colin Marshall, Why Do Koreans Love Herman Hesse's Demian Above All Other Western Novels?
          • Here's Bach's Kyrie I from Mass in B minor.
          • And the organ piece Suga plays - Passacaglia in D minor (shoutouts to Friend of Pod, Noel, for finding it!)
          • To drive the point home? What was the audience waiting to be exposed to an anthem rock x EDM crossover track on Ellen? [it doesn't even have mark's verse smh]
          • Sorry, it's not actually a Teen Vogue article. It's a PhD dissertation - BTS' A.R.M.Y. Web 2.0 Composing: Fangirl Translinguality as Parasocial, Motile Literacy Praxis, published in 2019.
          • BTS's Tiny Desk (Home) Concert! It is nice and sweet and cute. You should listen to it!
          • sneak preview of next season...

            • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates. If you have any questions you'd like to send in, direct them to us on Twitter. See you next time!

            58 min
          • 10 – BTS - Blood Sweat & Tears, pt. 1

            It's finally here! Let's get to it. Listen and watch the music video, the stage performance (this one's got good fan chants), or the dance practice. Onward to notes:

            • GLAM's biggest hit, In Front of the Mirror, a "trot, Europop and hip-hop" song. They disbanded in 2015 after a blackmailing scandal.
            • TIME interviews Bang Si-Hyuk.
            • Here's a fan-made explainer for the BTS Universe. But to give you a taster, the BTS Universe includes:
              • (includes gore, themes of abuse, suicide, homicide)
              • music videos,
              • extended releases of the same music video,
              • Japanese music videos, but only the little symbolic teasers outside of the heavy choreo focus,
              • prologue teasers, released right at the top of the promo cycle,
              • epilogue videos released at the tail end of the promo cycle,
              • seven short films,
              • the next single's music video,
              • booklets that came with the albums (and note the translation effort of the fans!)
              • BTS Universe social media posts,
              • a sixteen-episode web cartoon,
              • a blog for a fictional flower shop that kept getting rewritten, since it's a time-travel story,
              • sentence teasers in poster releases, other scattered social media accounts, other snippets of music videos of dubious canonicity... the list continues.
              • By way of comparison, watch EXO's MAMA, and then their second release, Wolf (CHOGIWAAAA
                • 1 hr 19 min
              • 9 – Wonder Girls - Nobody

                See and listen to just how Nobody will never change: the English music video, the Korean music video, the Japanese music video, the Mandarin Chinese music video, or the song release live stage performance. Onward to notes:

                • Wonder Girls' debut song, Irony.
                • Wonder Girls' contribution to the debt that K-pop owes to reggae.
                • I Feel You, which literally gives itself a "WTV" 1987 title even as there's an Mnet 2015 watermark in the corner.
                • "Do you remember? When JYP tried really, really hard to break into the US?" asks JYP on his and Sunmi's new duet, When We Disco.
                • Happy 20th debut anniversary, BoA! Go give Listen To My Heart a... listen.
                • This episode owes a lot to the K-pendium piece on Nobody. RIP K-pendium; Taemin might have gotten me (Claudia) into K-pop, but it was K-pendium that made me stay. Yes I'm a big nerd.
                • Watch them open for the Jonas Brothers with us.
                • The silences in our reactions were live, and I only regret we did not film our faces so we could insert some choice facial expressions.
                • Even listening to this back through is stressful, yeesh.
                • Also, this explains why Western camera crews are so very bad at filming K-pop group performances - they keep trying to focus on the singer, which for a K-pop choreo, has no strong relationship to who or what your eye should be focusing on.
                • Jason Nevins was responsible for this "slur of a remix".
                  • 1 hr 10 min
                • 8 – Twice - TT

                  Listen and watch the music video, the Japanese music video, the song release live stage performance (feat. uncomfortably long elongated intro), or dance practice video. Onward to notes:

                  • Mnet is a big subscription music TV channel.
                  • OK so the whole deal with 2AM/2PM: they were once an 11-man band called One Day and then they split in half. 2AM has been inactive since 2015, and 2PM has been on hiatus since 2017.
                  • To get you a taste of what it was like, here's the trailer for the final episode of SIXTEEN. The comments are worth reading (yes, really!) as a kind of time capsule.
                  • TWICE - Like OOH-AHH, their debut song.
                  • The Fancy rocker hand sign bit. Also, check out how they've graduated from the small dance studio to the deluxe one with JYP ceiling lights.
                  • SORRY MERRY-GO-ROUNDS DON'T HURT US
                  • Sidechaining in action with Daft Punk.
                  • we slipped and accidentally BTS
                  • It was not the flute, I just have Intro: Singularity on a playlist with 134340 (which features flutes a-plenty) - CL
                  • The "Russian Meme Song" in question is 7th Element, by Vitas. Here's the Croes Brothers' version (one of them, anyway).
                  • I baked you a pie!

                    • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates.

                    1 hr 12 min
                  • 7 – Blackpink - Whistle

                    Listen and watch the music video, the song release live stage performance, or dance practice video. Onward to notes:

                    • Their latest single, released on the same day as BTS's Stay Gold: How You Like That
                    • BLACKPINK - Boombayah, which released with Whistle as part of their 2016 debut.
                    • "Fan greet" is shorthand for "fan meet-and-greet".
                    • Lady Gaga, BLACKPINK - Sour Candy
                    • Go support Michael's other podcast, Hot Singles!
                    • If you want to take a look, here's an episode of a variety show featuring BLACKPINK, with English subtitles. Let's just say that if the only thinkg you know of BLACKPINK is their stage performances, they act differently.
                    • Jennie's Insta.
                    • In this thread:
                      • " rel="noopener noreferrer">Blackpink fans plead with YG to let BLACKPINK out of the dungeon. Not an endorsement, just an interesting K-pop cultural snapshot.
                    • Two interesting variants of Whistle: an acoustic live Japanese version, and the rock remix live Seoul stage version.
                    • Four Chords of Pop
                    • John Coltrane - My Favourite Things

                      • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates.

                      1 hr 5 min
                    • 6 – Red Velvet - One Of These Nights

                      Listen and watch the music video or the song release live stage performance. Onward to notes:

                      • English language reporting on Red Velvet's North Korean concert. Stan Ontology wants to note here that any event like this is going to be rife with contradiction and tensions - it's not as if there aren't emotional performances going on for the South Korean contingent, either. What we're saying is: it was awkward, ok?
                      • The Chilseok myth.
                      • f(x) - Red Light. This is the track that was supposed to be an explicit criticism of the Sewol Ferry tragedy, per SM Entertainment production team leader Lee Sung Soo.
                      • One of the academic pieces we read on the Sewol Ferry disaster.
                      • The R&B tracks we referenced: Aaliyah - Rock The Boat, SWV - Rain, Kelela - Frontline.
                      • K-Pop Fancams Got Political to Protect Black Lives Matter Protesters From Dallas Police, and another excellent piece also from Teen Vogue On K-Pop Fans, Political Activism, and the Necessity of Nuance. As we say, there's a lot here.

                        • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates. Stay safe everyone.

                        1 hr 7 min
                      • 5 – EXO - Monster

                        In light of the massive protests going on in the USA at the time of releasing this episode, we open this episode with a message of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Stan Ontology supports the efforts of Black and indigenous activists in America and across the world, fighting for justice against a state that has long treated Black and brown lives with cruelty and indifference for too long. We applaud this and other similar movements fighting against police brutality.

                        Criticism and analysis of all culture is impoverished if it doesn't reckon with pervasive anti-black racism. We also want to critically engage with the ways in which race and racism shapes K-pop as a cultural phenomenon and industry. We remain committed to highlighting the work of Black artists in K-pop, as well as the debts that K-pop owes to Black musical traditions.

                        It's not widely publicized, but one of Monster's songwriters is Chikk, and she has a video about the songwriting process, featuring her demo vocals.

                        You should know that the music video and the Mandarin music video both contain (abstract and aesthetified/"prettied-up") scenes of police violence against the group members. You can also choose from the performance music video, the dance practice video, or the song release live stage performance. Off to the bullet points:

                        • This is also the episode where we crack all of K-pop. Chromatic basslines! Modal interchange! Mixolydian ♭6!
                        • Sidenote: The mixolydian ♭6 is also called the mixolydian ♭13, Aeolian dominant, or the one I (Claudia) knew it as, the melodic major.
                        • LOONA is part of Polaris Entertainment, which is a subsidiary of the Ilkwang Group.
                        • Once more with vigour: "simple" isn't bad, and especially not for pop!
                        • The example of Arabic music using the phrygian major mode is 'Hijaz Improvisation', by oud player Jaber Fayad. Arabic modes come from a distinct tradition to Western harmony, so there isn't a perfect correspondence between maqam hijaz used here and phyrgian major, but they share the distinctive interval of an augmented second between the second and third degrees of the scale.
                        • Here's a playlist with all the Western pop songs we mention!
                        • Some day I'll get to talk at length about the dance practice video as an earlier form of constructed intimacy and authenticity on platforms orthogonal to social media for a full hour. Some day.
                        • Return of the stripy shirt (AKA Taemin's practice video for MOVE).

                          • As always, remember to follow @StanOntology on Twitter for the latest episode updates. Stay safe everyone.

                          1 hr 46 min

                        About Stan Ontology

                        From the publisher's feed

                        Take a dive into the wondrous world of K-pop, one track at a time. Hosted by Claudia (@claudiawylo) and Michael (@regresssion).

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