K-Pop Demon Hunters and Song Recommendations: “Soda Pop”
If you’ve watched the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” movie on Netflix recently, you might still have some of the songs from the movie stuck in your head. While the songs on the whole had a bit more English than the majority of K-pop songs do (though there are certainly K-pop artists who have done songs or even entire albums in English), they were all pretty representative of the genre. If you’re interested in finding more K-pop songs with a similar vibe, I’ve got recommendations.
This week’s pick is “Soda Pop,” performed by the Saja Boys. It’s a definite earworm with summer vibes. However, this one was a difficult for me to find comparisons for, which led to me poking at a lot of songs.
Weirdly enough, the bulk of the K-pop I listen to is girl groups. I hadn’t realized this previously, but the numbers don’t lie. When you couple that with the fact that I have a very specific type of boy group I like best (the ones with more of a mature concept, as opposed to the cutesy bubblegum-pop boy groups), “Soda Pop” and songs like it are WAY outside of my normal listening range. The video that presents similar songs for all of the original songs in K-Pop Demon Hunters had eight songs they recommended, and I didn’t know any of them!
After a few days of trying to find a parallel song to “Soda Pop,” I realized that a similar song kept mashing itself up with it in my brain. When I finally thought about that other song, I realized what it was: “Kool” by Forestella.
Forestella is not your typical K-pop group. They’re a four member quartet formed through a competition show for vocalists, and they don’t dance or have any official rappers in their lineup. They haven’t released a ton of original songs, but “Kool” is one of the few exceptions to that. And it’s probably the song I like best that is similar to “Soda Pop.”
And though that’s the only good match I could find, I’ve got a few other songs with summer vibes that are catchy from some of the boy groups I like:
- Stray Kids: An eight-member boy group, which is my absolutely favorite K-pop boy group (who I finally saw live in May). They have two songs I’d recommend: “Time Out” and “Surfin’.” The latter song is performed by only three of the members, but it includes two of my favorite members.
- Ateez: Another eight-member boy group (who I’m seeing live in two weeks). They have an older song called “Wave,” and their new song, “Lemon Drop,” is a definite summer bop, but with a much more mature concept.
- Pentagon: Originally a ten-member boy group that is now basically disbanded (and the first K-pop group I saw live). They have a song called “Summer!” that is close to a good fit (it doesn’t have a video).
- BTS: Possibly one of the best-known K-pop groups, with seven members. While I am not a BTS fan in general, I enjoy a few of their songs, particularly “Dynamite” and “Permission to Dance” (both entirely in English), which both have the catchy, earworm part of “Soda Pop.”
- Twice: Okay, so this is a nine-member girl group (who I saw live a couple of years ago), so they don’t really fit here, but their song “Dance the Night Away” is my favorite girl group summer vibes song, so I’m tossing it in here.
I’ll be back next week with more analysis and recommendations!
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