Monday, April 12, 2010

K-Pop: SNSD Buffalaxed! Gee/Cheese

Buffalax is an internet coinage that's actually named after the Youtube User who first did it: some clown took a music video from another language, and wrote in subtitles of the English words it sounded like, to quite hilarious results. The original was a viral video legend: the great, hilarious Bollywood Benny Lava.

Here, Girls Generation gets a full Buffalax treatment for their song "Gee Gee Gee" (or "Cheese Cheese Cheese")
There are a few bad words, and some absolutely absurd randomness. Enjoy.


Maybe one day I'll post on why "Gee" is one of the quintessential K-pop songs, and possibly my favorite song of 2009, in retrospect, now that I don't have to hear it every time I pass a cosmetics shop. It may well also go down as SNSD's peak, especially now that they're dressing in black and looking not just exactly like each other (as they always did) but also exactly like every other K-pop girl group. They even recorded the transition in the last ten seconds of this video, which includes some bad English, and that most annoying/sometimes contentious of Korean words: "Oppa"(explained) (see #8 of this list), leading to this video, which looks too much like this video... except Brown Eyed Gulls do it better.

OK. I'll admit; SNSD are a guilty pleasure of mine; they're fun, or at least were when they wore bright colors and stuff. We'll see if they remain fun now that they're trying to sound like Katy Perry and Goldfrapp instead of working that cheerful after-school-party vibe they did so well.

Memo to K-pop: there are already lots of bands dressing in black and doing sexy dances. Differentiation sells. I think.


Brown Eyed Girls

(source)


After School
(source)


SNSD



I could go on. K-pop needs another girl group wearing black like Jongno needs another Starbucks.

But then, without black leather sexydance groups, we wouldn't have had the greatest K-pop name ever: 혜나, whose music and dancing are nothing special, but her name, when transliterated into English, reads, "Hyena." I wonder if she has a distinctive laugh. Hyenas have one of the strongest bites in the animal kingdom. I have no idea what that means for the K-pop version.

3 comments:

Valerie Knight said...

That's hilarious!

Rob said...

He's done a lot of great "translations." This is my favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc5SwThrcdM.

beatnix said...

LOL... this song's the ring tone on my iphone. I get a lot of weird looks or chuckles from my Korean co-workers or friends whenever my phone rings because ppl know that I'm into rock music.