Lance Bass at Rocco's in WeHo | California Live | NBCLA

What does every boy band member need after stepping off the stage in front of thousands of hysteric fans?

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Music Features

ELHAE Talks TikTok Love and How He Connected with a K-Pop Superstar

The singer returned to Popdust to talk about the release of his new single "Need To Know."

ELHAE

Since we last spoke, Jamaal Jones, better known as Atlanta crooner ELHAE, released his sophomore album, wrapped up his first-ever sold-out headliner tour, kicked off summer 2020 with a slick new song featuring MONSTA X's I.M., and got super into TikTok.

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New Releases

Taehyung of BTS Makes History with Stunning New Song, "Sweet Night"

What other Korean solo artist has had a single debut as #1 on both the US and UK ITunes charts?

[MV] V (BTS) - Sweet Night [이태원 클라쓰 OST Part.12 (ITAEWON CLASS OST Part.12)]

V (real name Taehyung), member of international K-Pop super group BTS, has just released a touching new song for Itaewon Class OST.

The hit drama stars Park Seo Joon, a friend of Taehyung, undoubtedly adding to the star's interest in recording a song for the soundtrack.

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New Releases

BTS' "Black Swan" Is the Song that Keeps On Giving

The new "Black Swan" music video is incredible.

BTS (방탄소년단) 'Black Swan' Official MV

It's no secret that "Black Swan"—not to mention BTS' entire new album, Map of the Soul: 7—is a genuine masterpiece.

Up until today, most people assumed that the "Black Swan" Art Film performed by MN Dance Company, wherein the professional dance troupe performs a bleak, gripping, interpretive dance to the song in an abandoned mall, served as the song's only official music video. While it didn't feature the BTS boys themselves, it did a wonderful job conveying the conflicted emotion of "Black Swan" through dance.

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MUSIC

The New BTS Single, "Black Swan," Is a Genuine Masterpiece

BTS knows that their audience loves them. The real question is how the members of BTS feel about themselves as artists.

BTS at the American Music Awards

Photo by Featureflash Photo Agency (Shutterstock)

All too frequently, a major group releases their latest single and you can't help but feel like they dialed it in–the sound is simple, the lyrics are color-by-number, and the song, while destined for Top 40, is ultimately meaningless. BTS' "Black Swan" is the exact opposite.

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Louis Tomlinson, previously of One Direction fame, just released his new single "We Made It."

The pop star announced his debut solo album, entitled Walls and dropping January 31, 2020, the day before releasing the song. The music video follows a young couple through the formation of their relationship and the eventual hardships they face, as Tomlinson sort of just looks on and narrates like a creepy, British fairy godmother. It seems as if maybe Tomlinson could only be bothered to go to one day of filming, so they shot the video without him and then just inserted shots of him singing with his hands in his pockets in front of vaguely similar scenery.

But the video aside, it's a song so wholly unremarkable that every time you read the name you may find yourself singing the far superior "Love It If We Made It" by The 1975 in your head—even if you're still literally listening to Tomlinson's song. It offers a repetitive, almost NSYNC-like rhythm and rhyming scheme, with lyrics that a robot could have written in its spare time. Unfortunately, it seems Tomlinson has taken his love of early 2000's British rock and channeled it into the creation of tepid, noncommittal music that sounds like someone trying to imitate The Wombats trying to imitate The Arctic Monkeys. It's so many levels removed from the kind of edgy, punch-you-in-the-face, British rock it's desperately trying to be that it ends up sounding like nothing at all.