k-pop compendium: 10 cm - 아메리카노 (americano)

this post is technically a lie. when i was first introduced to this song i was told that it belonged to the rare and mysterious field of k-indie. i was excited. but then i figured out pretty quickly that k-indie was just k-pop with bongos. i guess last weekend when i saw those kids sitting around downtown singing jason mraz songs and playing the bongos that was also k-indie, but for the purposes of this blog, if it looks like a k-pop song and sounds like a k-pop song, it might as well be a k-pop song.

i don't actually know anything about 10cm and i don't really feel like investigating so i'm just going to make some things up. the name 10cm obviously means 10 centimeters which is exactly as high as their ambitions. or maybe they're feeling a little confident in the underpants department. or maybe its how much narrower they wish their faces were. who knows. (okay i just looked it up - its the difference in height between the two members - i like my explanations better) anyway its just two dudes, and two sharp dressers at that, singing a song about their favorite beverage, the americano.

a quick history of the americano for all y'all in the dark on this drink. the americano, or caffè americano, is a coffee drink made by adding hot water to espresso. its pretty similar to regular drip coffee but tastes like...well espresso, more than regular coffee. from what i hear, and apparently wikipedia confirms, that americanos were first made popular in ww2. american gi's stationed in italy were jonsin' for some bean, but all the italians were familiar with was espresso. to compensate, the gi's would mix hot water with the espresso to make it more similar to the coffee style they were used to. and thus, the americano was born. and now, for some reason or another, its hugely popular in south korea. there are legion coffee shops in most cities, daegu included, but not all of them sell drip style coffee. but what you will find, every single time, is an americano.

so here we have two guys singing about this weird coffee concoction, probably in their favorite cafe to a bunch of indifferent patrons around them, and you know, whatever, its not bad. the little chorus hook - amer-amer-amer-amer-americano! - is pretty catchy and the dude isn't a bad singer (even if he does do a weird accent on the 'icano' part that makes him sound like he's a snobby asshole). of course i wouldn't think of what is basically korea's take on jason mraz as sounding anything like indie music, but for a soundscape that is ruthlessly dominated by your girls generations and 2ne1's, its a pretty significant alternative leap - which i guess is sort of a depressing statement about korean music.

oddly enough, another korean group, ye ara (예아라), made a song called 'americano' just earlier this year. its about 20 times worse than anything i've heard yet in korea. its like they just took a bunch of tracks and crammed them together. although i guess the dance scene in the diner is a little reminiscent of the dance scene in godard's 'band of outsiders', right? and whereas 10cm's americano is a charming ode to a much loved beverage (i'm only guessing here because i don't understand the lyrics), i have a feeling ye ara's is only a thinly veiled metaphor for giving someone some hot sexing, as if to say, "here, have some of my delicious hot americano. its hugely popular here in korea. and did i mention that its super hot? you might be sweating afterwards." both videos below!

10cm:


ye ara: