Life Before K-Pop.: My First Encounter with The K-Pop World (Feat. SHINee's Ring Ding Dong)

I'll be starting a new series titled L.B.K, Life Before K-Pop! Or more specifically, life before I watched a certain music video, or life before I became the knowledgeable K-Pop fanatic I am today! You get the gist. ^_^

My first exposure to K-Pop

My first K-Pop encounter was when I arrived at theater class early one morning. Two of my friends were watching a video of a dance practice. (The dance studio had a sky background.) I thought the dance routine was pretty impressive! One of my friends told me she really wanted to learn it. I also liked the song, so I made sure to ask her what it was called. 

""Genie" by Girls' Generation," she replied.

I searched it when I got home and came across the Japanese version of Genie. While I was a bit confused as to why there were two versions of the song-- a Korean one and a Japanese one-- I found myself loving both of them, and I downloaded the songs instantly!

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Flash forward to a month later.

I was never interested in K-Pop, until one day I kept hearing the word "shiny" being spoken of among my theater classmates! Later on, I found out they were talking about a Korean boy group called "SHINee". It was always "shiny this" and "shiny that" during break time! So when I got home, I decided to search them up on YouTube. I clicked the first music video I saw:

I only knew Key, after seeing my friend watching a Korean variety show of him on her laptop. Apart from that, I knew nothing else about this SHINee group. So from a non K-Pop fan's perspective, my reactions at certain points in the video were:

"What's with this guy's hair?"

"What is going on???"

"Um... drinking milk?? Okay..?"

"Okay, new outfits... Dancing on water now..."

"What's with the fake butterfly?"

"We're exploring now? What are they looking for?"

"WHOA! Look at that hair! Did this guy get electrocuted?"

"Baybehh~ askjdkasjdgfkl Crayzeehh~"

"What is up with these poof-y hairstyles?"

"Wait why are they saying Cola over and over?"

"Ling ding dong Ling ding dong...."

O_O "So... they have wings now?"

Long story short, I became addicted to this song and downloaded it! I don't know why I liked it so much. It's inexplicable, especially with all the heavy use of autotune. But, hey. That was the trend in the music industry back in those days....

After that, I began to grow a little more curious about these guys. There were a bunch of other music videos on the Suggestions list, so naturally I just decided to click on this one:

Oh. My. Goodness. As soon as I heard that beat drop at the 0:02 mark, that's when I knew I was trapped. There was no escaping the K-Pop domain after that. Once you set foot inside, there's no turning back..

And that's where it all began! I'm sure you all have some interesting K-Pop testimonies, too! Leave a comment and share your first K-Pop encounters!