weekly pop music profile #2

or: reasons why language education in the U.S. needs to get a goddamn grip on itself.

Here's another Super Junior song ("Supergirl") sung in Korean. Here's the same song, in Mandarin. I think the Mandarin version is the original. (Because the Korean version sounds a little awkward, doesn't it? Like the lyrics weren't originally meant to go with the music?) But maybe that's just because I found the Mandarin video first.

You see, one day SM Entertainment discovered that a number of Super Junior members were fluent in Mandarin. And so they decided to create a subgroup, called "Super Junior M" (the 'M' stands for Mandarin) that sings and performs in both Korean and Mandarin, for both Korean and Chinese audiences.

Imagine we're back in the golden era of American boy bands (and let's be real, American boy bands never had anything on Korean boy bands). Then imagine that one day the Backstreet Boys discover that 3 of them just happen to be fluent in Spanish. And so those 3 members start performing in both Spanish and English.

And it's not even that the other members don't know Spanish -- they know some, and probably a little French, too -- they're just not fluent.

Seriously, guys, wtf.