For reference, I got in to K-Pop around 2019/2020, I only stan BTS, but casually listen to many other groups including Twice, Blackpink, TXT, Shinee, STAYC, Le Sserafim, and NewJeans. As you can imagine, when I discovered BTS, Twice and Blackpink it's like it opened a whole new world of pop music for me - the Western influence was there but the sound was still very distinct imo. I would say around the end of 2022/start of 2023, after K-Pop experienced a huge international boom, I felt like the music started sounding a lot more globalised and less distinctive from Western pop music from my perspective - and I'm totally open to being wrong about this. BTS also started enlisting, and I wouldn't call classify their solo music as K-Pop. I know some people find it a problematic phrase, but simply from a sound perspective, I felt like was losing the K in K-Pop, and though I still followed the genre and found songs that I liked, I was definitely less invested than I was initially, and also sharing the music less. I don't know whether I just oversaturated with K-Pop back then, whether the K-Pop sound has somewhat returned, or whether I've just gotten used to the more global sounding K-Pop, but for some reason I'm really starting to love and be fond of some of the newer outputs this year, and it's making me want to explore K-Pop again, some of the tracks I really love are: Katseye - Gameboy, Gnarly (not my favorite, but I love how experimental it sounds) All Day Project - Famous, Wicked Girlset - Commas Ateez - Lemon Drop (love the dance more, but the song's not bad), In Your Fantasy (love this track and it's really making me want to listen to more Ateez, so I'm open to any recommendations from Atinys Plave - Way 4 Luv (adding in because I just recently discovered them). Since my curiosity has been peaked again, I wonder whether there are rookie groups people have been getting into and would recommend, I'm not familiar with many of the rookie groups currently. submitted by /u/Rookie18 [link] [comments]
