9 – Wonder Girls - Nobody

Stan Ontology

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". 🙉🙅‍♀️🚫 DO NOT LISTEN ️🚫🙅‍♀🙉 And when you do, remember we warned you.
• The slightly better other remix is the soft acoustic Rainstone Remix.
• CORRECTION: New York and New Jersey also have a large population of Korean-Americans - but still, California has the largest population.
• For our money, the superior SuperM track from their first EP is still Super Car. Incidentally, that video is also a good example of "Western cameramen struggle with K-pop performances".
• GOD I hoped we could sidestep OPPAN GANGNAM STYLE but no.
• Again I fervently hope that the mainstream comedy scene I grew up in HK with has moved past "ha ha middle aged fat man tries to be cool". I sure know that's still a thing in the States right now.

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