Fan Chant
Fan Chant: Last Chance to Get Your Spotify Wrapped Under Control
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! Friends, believe it or not, we have almost reached the time of year when Spotify’s data collection period ends and the streaming service begins assembling the beloved Spotify Wrapped. It might feel super early, but the official deadline is the end of this month, October 31st. The company then spends November preparing the yearly breakdown to roll out at the start of December, which, more often than not, sends me into a yearly breakdown of my own. The thing is, when I love something, I love it e...
Fan Chant: A Stray Kids MAXIDENT Breakdown and Beyond
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! It’s been a busy past week for STAY, as Stray Kids dropped their latest mini-album, MAXIDENT, and plenty of content has been rolling out around the eight-piece act. This, of course, includes our own interview with the group — in case you missed it, I sat down with Stray Kids recently to chat about the album, their ongoing world tour, and how they’ve been filling their time lately. You can find the full interview here! This is the second time I’ve had the joy of speaking with Stray Kids (wa...
Fan Chant: The Perfect Fall Playlist, A Teaser for Minho of SHINee’s New K-Drama, and More
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! Friends, autumn is officially upon us. I know it’s been appropriately gloomy in NYC and dreamy as ever in Los Angeles, but here in Nashville (America’s former “It” city, if you will), I’m happy to say that we do get a truly lovely fall season. I have so many K-pop songs I tend to associate with summer — TWICE’s “Alcohol-Free” and ATEEZ’s “Wave,” for example — but it’s time for a shakeup on the local Spotify. Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore are honestly the heaviest in my personal rotation ...
Fan Chant: 2022 Is for the Girls
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! At its core, I simply believe that being a K-pop fan should be fun. Think about why you got into your ult group — whether it was the music, the thrilling music videos, or the immaculate vibes between members, odds are there was something that made you smile and want to keep tuning in. For the chronically online among us — myself absolutely included — it’s easy to get caught up in release goals, voting, and the ever-present charts that circulate fandoms. This week, I found myself thinking about ...
Fan Chant: Talking to Jackson Wang About a Jackson Wang Party
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! A few weeks ago, I had the joy of jumping on the phone with the one and only Jackson Wang to chat about his wonderful new album, MAGIC MAN. We had a really lovely conversation that spanned almost an hour, and for today’s column, I wanted to share a bit more about more about the experience, along with some full quotes from our chat that didn’t make it into the final interview. I should’ve known when the conversation started like this: Mary: Hello, Jackson Wang, I’m so happy to be talking to you....
Fan Chant: TWICE Are Talking the Talk
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! It feels strange to say that there’s ever a “light week” as someone on the K-pop beat, but this past week was maybe as close as we are going to get for a while. A week without any huge new releases meant I had some space to dig into some recent albums that I hadn’t spent dedicated time with just yet — it’s absurd how good this NewJeans debut EP is! I finally had a moment to venture beyond “Attention” and learned that every track on the mini-album is, in fact, a gem. Similarly, this week gave me...
Fan Chant: Spiraling Into SEVENTEEN and a Q&A with an Industry Expert About Spotify’s K-POP ON! Campaign
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! Readers of Fan Chant, you are going to be among the first to hear of a new journey I’ve somehow found myself on. The rumors are true — I’m tiptoeing into my CARAT era. I’m not sure if any other K-pop fans feel this way, but I try very hard to be a casual listener a lot of the time. When it comes to groups I really and truly take the time to dive into — learning names, choosing a bias, etc. — I’m just not sure I have the time for more wonderful people to add to the mix. I’m busy! Advertisement …...
Fan Chant: It’s Time to Get On CIX’s Wave
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also, make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! This week, I really wanted to talk about CIX. The quintet out of C9 Entertainment, made up of Jinyoung, BX, Seunghun, Hyunsuk and Yonghee, is an absolute treasure of a K-pop group. The act debuted back in 2019 and has amassed a jewel box of a discography in the years since. CIX’s breakout track is considered to be “Cinema,” a glittering, dreamy pop offering with the most addictive earworm of a chorus. Almost exactly a year ago, in August of 2021, CIX released their debut album, OK Prologue: Be ...
Fan Chant: A Guide to KCON Los Angeles 2022
Welcome to Fan Chant, a weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. Also make sure to subscribe to my companion newsletter! This weekend, the city of Los Angeles welcomes the return of KCON, an enormous celebration of music, culture, and community, anchored by performances from some of everyone’s favorite K-pop acts. For the new or uninitiated (like yours truly), it can be a bit overwhelming to prepare for an event featuring so many great artists and groups. This year’s lineup is truly exciting, so we’ve assembled a quick and easy guide to KCON 2022. What Is KCON? Launched a decade ago in 2012 with its flagship event...
Fan Chant: ENHYPEN Interview, ATEEZ EP Breakdown, and More
Hello and welcome to Fan Chant, a new weekly column for K-pop fans, stans, and newbies alike. Each week, I’ll be rolling out interviews, lists, and all kinds of content to keep you in the loop on the latest and greatest from our friends in Seoul and beyond. I’m a Contributing Editor here at Consequence, and while I have the joy of getting to write about so many things — pop and indie music, festivals, and even film and TV — one of my most favorite parts of my job is getting to write about K-pop. I love how passionate K-pop fans are; it’s genuinely rewarding as a writer to get to share my work with people who pay attention to every word choice and turn of phrase in a piece. The first piece of writing I ever had published here at Consequence was about BTS (way back in 2020, in the “Dynamite”...
