What Does 2AM’s Successful Comeback Mean in K-Pop?

2AM has put a stop to Big Bang sweeping the music charts, with their new mini-album ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Way of Love,’ after a year and a half sweeping various Korean music charts.

Big Bang’s new title tracks ‘Blue’ and ‘Fantastic Baby’ has received much love since their release but just in two weeks have been pushed back by 2AM’s new song ‘I Wonder If You Hurt Like Me.’

Although miss A, John Park has been eyeing Big Bang’s throne they were only able to top the charts for a short period, in comparison 2AM’s title song ‘I Wonder If You Hurt Like Me’ is still keeping the top spot after 3 days since the release on March 12.

2AM’s successful comeback has somewhat been anticipated. 2AM has shown distinction from other idol groups that mainly show dance music by having hits such as ‘Even If I Die I Can’t Let You Go,’ ‘I Was Wrong,’ ‘You Wouldn’t Answer My Calls.’

The comeback after a year and half of 2AM’s has big implications in the current Korean music industry. The most important point is that Big Bang including other majority idol singers focus mostly on style, performance and visual, however in comparison 2AM has gone head to head with their voice and vocal talent of delivering emotion through music which is the basic essence of music that has given them the victory.

Especially reflecting back on the fever of various audition programs such as ‘I Am A Singer,’ including ‘Superstar K’ was an opportunity to refocus on the value of talented vocalists have been hidden. Also in reality large number of ‘master’ that wasn’t noticed before have risen above the surface.

Following such trend it’s that 2AM who has the identity as an ‘idol artist’ to have succeeded with ‘traditional ballad’ has very clear meaning.

The reason that we can give great significance of 2AM’s success is that 2AM could play a role to bring more diverse genre in K-Pop wave that is spreading out to the world.

The current K-Pop singers that have gained international popularity is mostly promoting dance genre that focuses on performance and visual. Although this is to first appeal K-pop dance music’s personality and uniqueness, however the major reason is due to the language barrier of relaying such emotional lyrics in a different language.

Such attitude will only provide a prejudice and slant to international fans that ‘K-pop is only dance’ As K-Pop is generating a certain amount of revenue through overseas market it seems that Korean producers have focused only to mass produce dance musicians. It’s that K-Pop’s advancement in foreign markets is rather making Korea’s music industry to become narrow-minded in selecting a genre. In reality over the past several years, in the exception of 2AM the majority of new artists have debuted with dance music.

2AM proved that K-Pop ballad can succeed overseas through the group’s debut in Japan last year.

It seems that 2AM’s successful comeback will not only influence Korea’s vocalist but also the expansion of K-Pop music overseas. It will become an opportunity to solidify that even different genres of K-Pop can receive the same amount of love.