The first song to sample classical music in K-pop music appeared in 1977. Lee Hyun Woo’s “The Day After You Left” debuted in 1977 and used the second movement of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Winter” for sampling.
The production of classical music samples in K-pop increased in 2016 with the release of BTS Jimin’s “Lie,” VIXX’s “Fantasy” and Ladies’ Code’s “Chaconne.” These songs sampled Manuel de Falla’s “La Vida Breve,” Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and Bach’s “Partita No. 2 in d minor,” respectively. “Lie” reached a milestone of 80 million streams in 2019, becoming the highest streamed song in its album, according to All Kpop.
Sean Calhoun, an arranger for ReacttotheK, a YouTube channel that brings together K-pop, classical music and jazz, shared his thoughts about classical music sampling in K-pop.
“If you take a little phrase from classical music, it ends up removing everything that was good about it because you lose the harmonic variety and you just get two chords going back and forth,” Calhoun said. “It just kind of sounds like you’ve ended up with less interesting harmonies than I would generally expect from K-pop. For taking an idea from classical music, if they can figure out how to really integrate and extrapolate it and pull it in new directions, it can work really well.”
The trend continued to increase, with five songs using classical music samples in 2017. The trend decreased in 2018 and 2019, with no K-pop songs sampling classical music in those years.
The trend seemed to be about to come to an end, but Cherry Bullet and Golden Child, two popular bands in 2020, sampled Beethoven and Paganini.
Subsequently, six songs debuted in 2021, two from ATEEZ. Finally, in 2022, seven songs debuted with classical music samples, with examples being “Feel My Rhythm” and “Birthday” by Red Velvet and “Shut Down” by Blackpink.
Blackpink’s 2022 song “Shut Down” contributed greatly to the trend, as it opened at “No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 with 152.8 million streams and 17,000 downloads sold worldwide in the Sept. 16-22 tracking week,” according to Billboard.
“Shut Down” includes the first two and a half measures of Paganini’s “La Campanella,” looping it throughout the song. Though it contains a classical music sample, some say that it was not done wisely.
Ayanna Correa, a K-pop dancer and freshman at Irvine Valley College, said she thinks classical music in K-pop is oversaturated.
“I’m afraid that it’s kind of going to turn into a thing,” Correa said. “We’ll lose a lot of the ones that we’ve done really well because everyone’s trying to do it, as opposed to just every once in a while and actually putting effort into it and making it sound good.”
If the trend continues, the end of the trend may be coming closer.
Former Chicago Tribune arts critic Howard Reich said that the trend is a passing fad in pop music as music changes to match the audience’s changing music tastes. Reich also addresses the myth that fans believe the incorporation of classical music into modern music exposes the audience to a new genre they have not listened to.
“The idea is that you hear this classical piece in K-pop, and now you’ll be interested in classical music,” Reich said. “I’ve heard that to justify everything. I find them to be two different worlds. Each kind of music has to draw its own audience, and classical music demands certain demands of the listener. You can’t come to a classical music piece knowing nothing. You have to learn a little to meet it halfway.”
With rising debuts in K-pop songs using classical music samples, it is evident that many K-pop songwriters are turning to classical music for inspiration in the present day, and the trend will continue. If K-pop songwriters choose to use classical music samples, songs like “Feel My Rhythm” and “Everybody’s Got a $ecret” by Billlie could serve as inspiration, Calhoun said.
“With ‘Feel My Rhythm,’ there are a couple of chords that were changed slightly to add a little extra spice, and there’s a whole counter melody that becomes the main melody in the voice, but not exactly the one Bach originally wrote,” Calhoun said. “Billlie’s ‘Everybody’s Got a $ecret’ starts out with “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” by Tchaikovsky, which is a cliche, but when it starts creeping into the chorus, the patterns of chords fit in there and grow out of the original and into new melodies. It’s exciting to hear that because a big part of K-pop is taking disparate things and putting them together to figure out a way to make them work, whether it’s just types of styles or actual phrases from pieces.”
