Monday, July 27, 2009

watching korean pop music shows such as sbs inkigayo (SBS 인기가요) has been a part of my life since i was a kid and lived in alaska from the 3rd to 8th grade. my family moved to the state's largest city, anchorage, in 1992 because my uncle and other relatives had lived there since the early 80's and owned the only korean/asian supermarket in the city. this was before the age of dvds and the internet so my uncle's hugely popular korean-video-rental-thing he had going on did pretty well. he had dramas, singing shows, soap operas and pretty much anything else that was popular at the moment. i remember being a little kid and watching singing shows with my two older sisters and they would critique everyone and talk about who had their double-eyelid surgery done, she's this, he's that, etc. being a little 3rd grader, i would always wonder "wtf are they (my sisters) talking about? i'm confused." i learned a lot from listening to their opinions about shit because i always looked up to them and thought they were so much cooler than me.

so this is when my love for korean music truly started. when i listen to my favorite korean music from that era, it always brings me back to that time in my life (it feels like another lifetime ago). when kim gun mo (김건모) first came out, my sisters used to call him eyeliner boy. haha i even remember them joking that they'd call me that, too. anyway, his second and third albums are absolute korean classics to me. his third album is also the #1 selling korean album of all time with 2.8 million sold in 1995. i'm sure the current korean acts could possibly be outselling that number, but it's so hard to keep track with illegal downloading. kim gun mo's up to album number twelve at this point, but i only listen to his third and fourth ones, i don't really about the others.

i hate to sound like a broke record but i fucking god damn love 90's music, it's the shit. period. i always like looking at the album covers too because it's nice to have a visual of the time. here are the album covers for my two favorites.



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