I got into K-Pop quite a while ago, but since becoming more serious about my faith have often walked back from idolatry to just music enjoyment. I have also recently been thinking I should pay more attention to the meaning of the songs I listen to, even if they’re in a different language. That is going to take… a lot of work. But I think it will start with filtering out the new songs that come into my sphere of attention and going through the entire discography of Red Velvet and LOONA to sort out the ones I should keep around vs the ones I could chuck.

This is gonna take a while. I have already tried to go through LOONA’s ++ album and like I’m a bit conflicted bc they’re all just love songs? I guess most pop songs are about romance. Are the lyrics really that worthwhile? That’s why I like listening to K-Pop in large part: you can just enjoy cool sounds without thinking too much about the meaning. But I realised lately that even though I don’t understand the meaning, those who know Korean do. I sometimes get irked when people sing along to really bad English songs, but those people also probably just listen to the song bc it sounds good.

11/06/2022

I reached a bit of a breaking point recently, so I am currently on a K-Pop fast. K-Pop songs are in my brain far too much of my life. I am missing a LOONA comeback. See you all in July.

15/06/2022

I still have so much K-Pop song in my brain. It’s astounding. But I don’t miss it too much. I often find myself start singing a song in my head, and then doing some of the actions (I used to do a lot of K-Pop dance).

17/07/2022

I did the fast, and when it was over I went back to listening to K-Pop, but I listen to it much less, and I don’t feel that NEED for it. I have also started going through all my K-Pop songs (ones in my Spotify library) and filtering them into three spotify playlists:

  • yay-pop
    • songs that would make me go “yay” if Jesus walked into my room and asked me to put on some beats
    • affirm biblical values
    • add positive value with their meaning
  • may-pop
    • it’s generally neutral?
    • a lot of love songs, of which there are many, but they don’t add much value.
    • don’t outwardly contradict biblical values, but it’s not like they’re all that meaningful.
    • somewhere for the in-betweens: I still like listening to nice sounds.
  • nay-pop
    • absolute no’s
    • blatantly contradict biblical values and teachings
    • on another note, could have other aspects to the artist or label that I dislike?
      • eg. I am NOT listening to LE SSERAFIM because the oversexualisation of Those young girls in particular is making me writhe in my seat. but they’re not going in the NAY playlist because I wasn’t really listening to them in the first place

Giving up a 4 minute-long song is theoretically easy because God is so much more than whatever decibels I can fill my head with. But I’ve grown fond of a lot of songs that I am gonna be giving up. and that’s just Christian tings.

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