I have always had interest in various music genres, but in 2012, I was blown away by a genre of music called “K-Pop.”

The term “K-Pop” refers to Korean pop music. As music goes, there are also other genres of hip-hop, R&B, dance, etc.

In 2012, I stumbled onto a duo called G-Dragon & T.O.P. The song I heard was called “Knock Out.” I really liked the song, but I was more interested in the video. The visuals, from what they were doing to the clothing and hairstyles, were so interesting, and I liked watching it.

I immediately wanted to find out more about the duo. I found out that they were a part of a five-member group called “BIGBANG.” The members were G-Dragon, T.O.P., Taeyang, Seungri, and Daesung, and they had released their new song “Fantastic Baby.” I fell in love with the song, the video… everything! I eventually started learning about their entertainment agencies and other groups of singers and rappers. Before I knew it, I was claiming fandoms and determining who my “bias” was for all the different groups I liked. My interests expanded to groups like 2NE1, GOT7, BTS, 4MINUTE, BLACKPINK and so forth. I often found myself in front of a mirror trying to learn the dance moves from music videos that I’m really into. Yeah, I’m in pretty deep.

I showed my mom a lot of the videos I like, and even though she liked them, she said, “You don’t even know what they’re saying.” I would always reply, “But who needs lyrics to enjoy music?” Although, I would look up the lyrics to understand the full meaning of the song. I’m actually fine with not knowing what they’re saying because that doesn’t get in the way of me enjoying the music. Also, if you listen to people speaking or singing in a different language long enough, you will eventually start to pick up on words and phrases. When you hear a word you know in a song, that word, and only that word, will be sung to the high heavens… and you’ll just hum or mumble the rest.

Even so, most of the songs have a few English words or sentences in them to appeal to English-speaking audiences. Those sentences will be overly sung to make up for the rest of the words you don’t know. There are even some songs that are completely in English.

Listening to music in general feels great, but it’s an amazing feeling to know that people across the world can be connected, regardless of language or culture, through music. It’s also fun to learn about different cultures of the world.

If you have time, I suggest you check out some of the groups I mentioned earlier. You never know, you could find yourself claiming a fandom just like I did!