Again on the hegemony of the English language in music. Korean pop is unashamedly and unavoidably influenced by American pop/r&b/urban/top 40 music, and as consequence English creeps into these songs frequently, with all transmitted sense of legitimacy and cool. And so we get lines like “let’s Secret time” and the pronunciation of “magic” as “masyic” (which doesn’t make sense to me because “ma” “ji” and a “ck” are all natural sounds in Korean, so my girlfriend says). Not that it’s a bad thing at all. It’s just a strange, affected and inescapable stamp of validity. A reminder and reinforcement that the pop language is ordainedly English-based. At least i can sing along to those parts.
