It’s the witching hour with Red Velvet
Happy Halloween! Over the years, K-Pop videos have tried every concept under the sun. Cutesy, sexy, angsty…horror-themed? Celebrate the spooks with some of the best videos to watch this Halloween.
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2PM’s Heartbeat
In 2009, 2PM released Heartbeat, a song with memorable lyrics, and to fit this theme, a zombie concept. (Although if you look at the members, matching bowl cuts don’t scream “zombie.”)
Nevertheless, the dance routine, which starts with Taecyeon showing a beating heart through hand motions, and then the zombie walk in the chorus went viral in the fall of 2009. 2PM also performed the song at awards shows and year-end specials with some…creative stage decisions that are quite funny to watch nowadays.
At the end of each music show performance, the 2PM members would rotate on who had the final death scene. Today, this would be known as an “ending fairy” (when the camera focuses on a member at the end of the performance and if the member looks good while breathing heavily, it usually goes viral). There was no word for this back then, so I suppose we can call it an “ending zombie.”
Red Velvet – Psycho
If there is a Korean girl group out there that really, truly fully commits to a concept, it would be Red Velvet. The name of the group connotes this: “Red” for their brighter, more vibrant eras, while “Velvet” has the deeper, more subversive songs.
Since their debut in 2014, they’ve been cheerleaders, marionette dolls, possibly murderous girls about to kill a man, etc. There’s no limit: another contender to this list was 2018’s Really Bad Boy, which looks like it’s set in a creepy theme park.
In 2019, they released Psycho, a seriously catchy song with an addictive beat, and as befitting the “Velvet” concept, had some of the best gothic, witchy aesthetics in K-pop: the girls running around in what looks like a torn down mansion, dressed in jeweled frocks, eerie looks at the viewer, the camera work, the butterflies… they all looked like very glamorous Miss Havishams, and it was great. The concept photos are even better: it’s giving coven vibes. Someone (probably a man) is getting murdered tonight.
Sunmi’s You Can’t Sit With Us
Like Red Velvet, former Wonder Girl and current top soloist Sunmi has a few songs that could go on this list, such as Full Moon, released seven years ago. This year, she came out with You Can’t Sit With Us, a video with an 80s-era high-teen concept in the middle of a zombie invasion.
It has everything you would want from an American teen horror movie from the 80s, complete with a slasher spree in the middle of a video-rental place, meant to evoke your local Blockbuster.
NCT 127’s Favorite
Last week, NCT 127 dropped Favorite, with its captivating chorus and vampire concept, just in time for Halloween. The group has been tearing it up the charts and performing on the music shows giving their vampy, campy best (particularly Doyoung, who everyone has noted is committed to the look), dressed like princely vampires on a mission.
Because it’s NCT 127 , there are of course follow-up videos to promote the song, particularly this one where they pretend to be vampires at a convention. It’s great.
