{"id":1976175,"date":"2025-08-23T14:38:01","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T14:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1976175"},"modified":"2025-08-23T14:38:01","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T14:38:01","slug":"kpopped-the-bizarre-musical-duel-where-south-koreas-hottest-stars-make-the-spice-girls-look-like-dead-weight-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/kpopped-the-bizarre-musical-duel-where-south-koreas-hottest-stars-make-the-spice-girls-look-like-dead-weight-television\/","title":{"rendered":"KPopped: the bizarre musical duel where South Korea\u2019s hottest stars make the Spice Girls look like dead weight | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\"><span style=\"color:var(--drop-cap);font-weight:700\" class=\"dcr-15rw6c2\">I<\/span> would like to understand K-pop better, as I believe it is very popular with the kids. That sentence is a hard-working one: it introduces the information that I have spent this week watching the new Apple TV+ show KPopped (from Friday 29 August), while suggesting I am too old to have any hope of success. But it\u2019s nowhere near as hard-working as a Korean pop star.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">This battle of the bands-style show aims to raise awareness of K-pop in the west like it\u2019s lymphatic filariasis or something. The format reminds me of PE lessons. You know how gym teachers split groups of friends up, so they concentrate? Here, Korean boy and girl groups such as JO1 and Blackswan are split in half. Each half works with a famous western pop artist, re-tooling their best-known song in K-pop mode. The resulting performances are voted for by the studio audience, and the winner gets \u2013 well, nothing. An\u00a0injection of relevance.<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"youtube-embed\" class=\"dcr-13aa88h\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/qCrIwry8zSI?wmode=opaque&amp;feature=oembed\" title=\"KPOPPED - Official Trailer | Apple TV+\" height=\"480\" width=\"854\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The show is produced and hosted by rapper <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/megan-thee-stallion\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Megan Thee Stallion<\/a> \u2013 with Gangnam Style\u2019s <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/psy\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Psy<\/a> as co-host. I have spent five years trying to understand why Megan Thee Stallion is called that. Whenever I ask the internet, it assumes I\u2019m questioning the horse bit. (She is statuesque, like a stallion, which seems self-explanatory.) It\u2019s\u00a0actually the Elizabethan English in the middle I\u2019m intrigued by. Thee? An archaic form of address used in place of \u201cyou\u201d? I guess no one wants\u00a0to get pronouns wrong, so they leave it alone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The format is confusing, too. Each episode has two famous western artists competing against each other, supported by one mega-famous K-pop band, who are battling themselves. So, Megan Thee Stallion v R&amp;B veteran Patti LaBelle, each with half of Billie. Or 80s stars Taylor Dayne v Vanilla Ice, each teamed with half of girl group Kep1er. But when I jump straight to the Spice Girls ep, it turns out to just be Mel\u00a0B and Emma Bunton. Rather than splitting up \u2013 too triggering? \u2013 Scary and Baby both perform with both groups, working against the show\u2019s competitive logic. Also, watching a studio vote after the fact\u00a0just isn\u2019t that exciting.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dcr-1inf02i\"><\/span><span class=\"dcr-1qvd3m6\">New attitude \u2026 Patti LaBelle in KPopped.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Apple<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">What I am gripped by is the balance of power in the rehearsal rooms. The globally popular K-poppers have the grace and uncanny communication of synchronised swimmers. Perfect features, skin like peach blossom. Drilled within a hyper-exacting star system, they dance like a murmuration of swallows, or a handful of diamonds thrown in the air. The westerners, by comparison, look like dead weight. They dance like Rocky Balboa. They move less often than a 90-year-old in rent-controlled property. You can see their aura draining.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cFinally, we\u2019re having a laugh!\u201d Mel B exclaims, pulling out an intentionally hapless cartwheel in rehearsals, to polite titters. Some of this is to do with age, but not all of it. I love Emma Bunton, but can\u2019t see her popping or locking. Even Thee Stallion, no slouch, looks almost static. I\u2019ve never seen anyone look less impressed than Colombian singer <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2019\/jul\/27\/j-balvin-on-breakdowns-escobar-and-beyonce-reggaeton\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">J\u00a0Balvin<\/a> being shown around a South Korean market. He\u2019s worried, is the thing. He looks even more dejected once he gets into rehearsals with boyband <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2023\/feb\/23\/ateez-review-hard-not-to-be-wowed-by-this-22-song-k-pop-endurance-test\" data-link-name=\"in body link\">Ateez<\/a>. \u201cShall we show him an easy one?\u201d one of them says, in\u00a0Korean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The problem is that our pop stars are, above all, salespeople of their own charisma, which they cannot subsume. It\u2019s an existential nightmare for them to share the stage. Korea, like most Asian countries, values group harmony, cooperation, respect for elders and social hierarchy. You\u2019ve never seen such polite celebs. \u201cI think we will win\u201d is the sassiest they get. Our performers are like badly behaved schoolkids, acting out because they\u2019re falling behind in history.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">I understand K-pop now. Impeccable choreography, maximalist production and millions of ideas. But it\u2019s still our guys I\u2019m tuning in for, to see who handles the pressure least well. Will\u00a0Boy George say something cutting? Will TLC cause an international incident? Will Vanilla Ice get detention for smoking? Who will these legends prove themselves to be, when they\u2019re not the most popular person in the room? KPopped isn\u2019t thee best talent show ever created, but it may\u00a0be thee most revealing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.theguardian.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I would like to understand K-pop better, as I believe it is very popular with the kids. That sentence is a hard-working one: it introduces the information that I have spent this week watching the new Apple TV+ show KPopped (from Friday 29 August), while suggesting I am too old to have any hope of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1976176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/KPopped-the-bizarre-musical-duel-where-South-Koreas-hottest-stars.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1976176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}