SBS Pop Asia: Bringing awesome music to the gwai lo masses

While I'm rarely awake before 10am noon on Sundays I was up a little bit earlier than usual last weekend and was rewarded with SBS Pop Asia (8.30am-10.30am, SBS1). Now that Channel 10 has killed off Video Hits there was really nowhere for people to go for a hit of pure, shameless, pop music. UNTIL NOW.

A year or so ago I stumbled across a video by a band called 'Super Junior', a Korean boy band made up of 13 members. I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen! There were choreographed dance routines, and even though I couldn't understand a word they were singing, the songs were so damn catchy I couldn't help singing along. Terribly. Check this out:


Okay, so technically, that's 'Super Junior M', the offshoot group where the members sing in Mandarin, but it's basically the same thing. Basically.

Anyway, I pretty much thought Super Junior was the pinnacle of all that Asian pop had to offer until I watched SBS Pop Asia. Read on to find out more.

This is Girls Generation, an (unsurprisingly) all-girl group with their super catchy song 'Gee'. I think this is what the hallucinations might look like if you drank an entire bottle of red cordial concentrate. They're all so sassy and cute! I dare you to not be tapping your foot by the end of the song.


Next up we have Beast with 'Bad Girl'. Being the superficial person that I am, I must say, some of those boys are pretty damn cute! And they're also not QUITE young enough for me to feel guilty about finding them attractive, so it's win/win.


I don't really like the next song as much as the others, but I wanted to include it as an example of how creative and crazy these filmclips can get. It's like they wrote a big 'Things that are cool' list and then proceeded to cram all of those things into a three minute videoclip. Spikes! Guns! Cars! Bling! Tight pants! Poodles! Wait...what?


As soon as I saw this next guy, I knew he was right up my alley. Taeyang. I'm led to believe he's a very popular chap, but I hadn't heard of him before last weekend, so I'll just have to take everyone's word for it. He struck me as a bit of a cross between Justin Timberlake and Usher. Essentially, Taeyang is a total pimp, and you should watch this video right now.


Wait, hang on! That was SAD music at the end of that clip! Taeyang was melancholy! You're tired of being a pimp Taeyang, and you want to get MARRIED? That must be it.


Oh. Er, that was a bit of a bummer. Taeyang just got totally cockblocked. So...anyway! Let's finish on a high note! 'Knock Out' by GD & TOP was my favourite video on SBS Pop Asia last weekend by far. Genuinely like this song, has a really cool N*E*R*D-style groove to it. Oh, and they're riding segways. You pretty much can't get cooler than that.



If you liked what you saw, be sure to check out SBS Pop Asia on SBS1 tomorrow morning at 8.30am. I myself will be getting out of bed especially for the occasion. If you're not in Australia, you can follow the show on Twitter, or check out the official website for news and a 24/7 streaming Asian pop radio station. I'm listening to it as we speak and grooving away in my seat. It's good times.