Greatest Hits:: Hyuna (Wonder Girls/4Minute): Bubble Pop!

 As messy as her private life has been in the last decade, I wanted to do this song now because it's a good pairing for the one I just did, and also, the second half of this month is going to be very boy group heavy, so I wanted to counter balance that a little. This was also long before any of her messiness back when she was nineteen and had all of those mistakes yet to make, but I don't want to punish this song for her choices. Now, that being said, if her choice of husband has soured all of her music to you, then thank you for reading this paragraph, and I'll let you keep going with your life. You'll like the next one I do though. No scandals attached to it or the artist. Promise.

So, HyunA debuted as part of...a lot of different groups. She originally debuted with Wonder Girls in 2007 as the main rapper, then she debuted in 4Minute in 2009 as the main rapper and main dancer. She debuted as one half of the duo Troublemaker, and one third of TripleH. She also debuted as part of Dazzling RED and also 4Tomorrow. She was very busy and well-sought after up until about 2016. Not that she wasn't still busy after that, but that's a lot of different groups. I'm also going to mark her group as 4Minute because that was the group she was in when this was released.

Bubble Pop! is the eponymous title track from her first mini album released in 2011. Our songwriters are the late and great Shinsadong Tiger (Momoland, EXID (Up & Down, Hot Pink, Every Night), T-ARA, BEAST, WJSN, TRI.BE, Apink, Yezi, UNI.T, IU, TAN, Fiestar, DIA, Youha, 7Senses, CLC, Dal Shabet, Shannon, VIXX, C-Clown, XUM, SPEED, Jewelry, Sha Sha, 9MUSES, Tre, Secret, Heize, In A Minute, Cross Gene, Baby V.O.X, G.NA, Weeekly, and Jang Na-Ra) and Choi Kyu Sung (TWICE, Chung Ha, Apink, T-ARA, miss A, IU, Beast, EXID, BTOB, VIXX, 2NE1, BIGBANG, StayC, Kim Jaejoong, TAN, TUNEXX (as a side note, I literally just wrote a review on this one, that's crazy), Heize, Davichi, and 5-ve Dolls). This was the first music video by a female soloist in K-Pop to hit 100 million views (first K-Pop artist following Psy, BIGBANG, Girls' Generation, and 2NE1, who are all in a heavyweight league of their own and were all at Big 3 companies), and the song won Best Dance Performance - Solo at the 2011 MAMAs, despite not getting a win on a music show!

• Group: 4Minute
• Debut Date: 2010
• Company: Cube Entertainment
• Status: Active
• Album: Bubble Pop!
• Song: Bubble Pop!
• Release Date: 2011 July 05

Apparently this was the K-Pop Gateway Song for a lot of people younger than me. I mean, I'm a few years younger than HyunA, but I'm still seeing numbers that around half of what I was at in 2011. That makes it wildly hilarious that she then did the Gangnam Style response with Psy because Gangnam Style was the other big Gateway Song around that time. Iconic. Genuinely iconic. Especially since so many kids didn't realize this was in a different language.

There are also a lot of people who came here from the Family Guy parody. If someone would like for me to include that clip here, I can come back and add it, but as of right now, I'm not going to include that clip.

The music video features a shirtless Lee Joon from MBLAQ to make for a delightful second gen crossover. I'll come back to him in a moment, but if you recognized him either from previous love for MBLAQ or because I've done two of their songs, I wanted that up front. There's a certain vibrant big band energy layered beneath the very summery vocals and the EDM to make the sound of the song both catchy and strong. It's not the kind of song you're likely to forget, which makes sense given that it's still regularly added to lists of "Best K-Pop Summer Songs".

We also get an EDM dance break, which I am over the moon about. It's definitely a mark of the times because almost everything had one during that time period, but that doesn't stop me from getting excited every time I find one. 

She has like seventeen different outfits for this music video, which is just wild, ranging from her iconic New York jersey to something that looks a bit like a white swimsuit. She's also got one that could have come straight out of The Dukes of Hazard and one that I would have worn myself in the summer of '11.

But this music video is just a jam. It's fun for the summer with comic book-style dot art added in every once in a while. 

And we get a fantastic cameo from Lee Joon. She got to shove him in a pool, which is funny and also had to have been fun for her. 

I'm going to spend more time on the performances because that's where this song shines, as cool as the music video is. Starting off with a Music Core performance, I'm a little in love with the muscle definition in her thighs, and amused by the fact that she appears to have been oiled up for this performance. With how tan she is, that definitely also matches the summer vibe.

You know what else is a little amusing? The fact that she's doing this in those gorgeous heels and her dancers are in sneakers. You go, girl.

She's also very clearly singing live. You can hear some distinct instability at 0:23, 1:24, and at 2:43, all of which are very brief and just the markers of live performance, but you can also hear the difference between her voice and the backtrack very clearly starting at 2:40.

I'd also like to direct your attention to 2:08, because the crowd gets so loud here, and it sounds like a lot of female screaming, which is interesting and surprising. 

I think her live vocals are even more obvious in this one. 

And I need to give a specific shout-out to the camera-work because while it has a lot of movements, sometimes an unnecessary amount, it's doing a really good with the zoom-in and zoom-outs on "Bubble bubble bubble pop, bubble bubble pop pop", which does such a good job of making that dynamic.

This particular Inkigayo stage actually included Lee Joon! Her dancers are in heels this time too! And the cheers are so loud the entire time.

But when were they the loudest? While Lee Joon was doing the "bubble pop" choreography. He has this cute little hop at 2:19 as he's moving to the side of the stage for HyunA's EDM dance break that made me smile. Work it, my dude. Work it. 

I also really appreciate that we've got a particular shot at 2:49 where you can see the sweat on her face. She's working hard. I'm glad to see it, especially once I realized that YouTube was trying to show this to me in 360p, which is unacceptable when it's available in 720p. 

Okay, so this was done in 2018 for Cube's whole company concert (which had to have been right before she and Dawn were removed from Cube's roster of artists and shortly after g-idle debuted) and it was performed with the group now known as i-dle! There is the cutest little giggle at :36 because the confetti gets played with, which is both humanizing and adorable, but also proves live mics.

I also absolutely love it at 2:43 when, after the EDM dance break, HyunA has Soyeon sing and then Soojin sing and then Yuqi sing. Like, she originally debuted over ten years before g-idle did, and because she transferred to Cube, she became their company sunbae, instead of just generally. And performing with them feels like the equivalent of her taking them under her wing with all of her experience.

I love how she perpetually seems to have a fan blowing on her for this song. I've noticed this in a few of the stages, but it feels like it might be more constant for this stage. 

Solidifying this song's iconic status as one of The Songs of Summer, this was from MCountdown's Summer Special in 2020. It's a nine-year-old song, at this point, y'all. This is an old performance, but it's inclusion to this list is what's important.

So I said that I wasn't going to include the Family Guy parody song, but you know what I will include?

Just Dance in 2018! The other thing that a lot of people know this song from!

The fun thing is that it gives you the romanized lyrics, but here you go! Have the workout in dance form!

Choreography time! Which means dance practice video!

This was obviously not her first or second practice of this song of the day, because she looks exhausted at the end, but this choreography would burn so much energy, that it's completely understandable. This is also early enough in the history of the practice videos that she is clearly in "practice clothes" not fake performance clothes designed to make this look good. And I love that her practice clothes are just spanx and an oversized t-shirt.

She spends so much of the song hopping and bouncing her weight to either foot that I'm glad to see her doing this in flat shoes. 

I love that kick she does as they're walking at the very first "bubble pop". I also love the fun little kick that they do after the first chorus before the floorwork. There are a lot of those little kicks throughout the performance, and they just do such a fun job of it. 

Either they hadn't finalized the start of the EDM dance break, or it's actually free-style, because she doesn't dance until the dancers join her again. She does stumble a little at 2:19, which is concerning and says something about how physically strenuous this song is, before straightening up as she walks into her position. I'm glad she stuck to her guns about this song's choreography, because the hip movements during the "bubble pop" sections are both the highlight and match the song so well that the choreography wouldn't be the same without it. 

You know what I realized at some point while I was watching all of these performances? This song came out before all of the members of BTOB showed up at the company. Peniel was still at JYPE at this point in time. Absolutely bonkers.

Anyway, thanks for reading everyone! I hope you enjoyed going back to 2011 with me to one of the most iconic K-Pop songs for the summer! I'm posting this in March, but it's never too early to start looking forward to summer!

If you've got a song you'd like me to cover, feel free to drop it my direction. You have some options! You've got comments on any of these posts! You've got the comments or DMs on whatever platform of social media you found this post on! Or, you can always toss it my direction via The Form. The next post is going to be one of those. 

Thanks for reading!

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