Colm O'Regan: I'm in my out-of-step era — but there's something to be said for it
When they aren't selling out stadiums, K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey use their secret identities as badass demon hunters in... K-pop Demon Hunters
When has a song ‘made it’? When has it crossed the line from niche interest/early adopter to being an earworm?
I remember when you knew a song had made it when it was played on the radio in Kevin Webster’s garage in Coronation Street or an EastEnders café. Soul II Soul, The Stone Roses, UB40 they all seeped in from Webster’s Garage.
Now I know a song is ‘there’ when my children are singing it. Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter, and Olivia Rodrigo all made their house chart debuts after cover versions in the kitchen.
It’s how I found out about Taylor Swift a decade after the rest of the world. Recently, a new set of songs has entered the humming half-sung playlist. A set of floor-filling bangers about, dating, being your authentic self and killing evil beings from another world.
K-pop Demon Hunters has taken over, and it’s having effects in other places as the cultural baton.
We asked the children to go through their clothes to see what had gone too small. The eldest holds out one familiar object for ‘moving on’. It’s a previously much-loved jumper that says ‘I’m in my Swiftie Era’.
“That still fits,” I say. “Why are you getting rid of it?”
“I’m not really in my Swiftie era any more,” she says. And I hear myself say: “Your Swiftie era will end when I say it’s over, when that jumper’s gone too small for you.”
I sound like an evil record label boss in a Taylor biopic. The one who bought her back catalogue and wants to dictate her eras. I can’t remember his name.
It’s a sort of American golf name — you know the ones that sound like hardware — Spigot Mulligan or Bink Oxide.
I’m probably out of step with the concept of eras. I’m in my charity shop era now, and that era ends when the nursing home rings my next of kin to say I’m out of underpants and would they mind popping into Dunnes to pick up a few bits?
We are very much in the era anyway. For the uninitiated, it’s Netflix’s most-watched thing ever.
An animation based on Korean pop music, a bit of folklore, and a girl band saving the world by killing all demons.
The songs like , and are being sung with greater intensity.
Even for a fan of ‘Disgruntled Man’ music like me, I have to admit, they are really good. And unlike pure musicals, they can exist outside the movie rather than just singing bits of the movie that could easily have been spoken.
All of the songs have the cupla focal Cóiréise. Your children will be all set for the K-Scoil after a while. They’ll be saying “Eoduwojin (Hah) apgil soke (Oh)” and you’ll be so proud. (It means “in the dark/ in the road ahead” for anyone.)
I love the randomness of an entertainment juggernaut sprinkling a language into the house from 6000 miles away.
And in a stunning leap, I’m going to say, the relaxed bilingualism of the songs is good for our thinking about the Irish language as well.
The words are there, unheralded, with no fuss. It’s an attitude of this is our language. ‘It’s here, take it or leave it’. And 300m streams on Netflix suggest a lot of people are taking it.
The Tuiseal Ginideach and the Modh Foshuiteach can come later. Just seeing a language appear with confidence without fuss just makes you, at the very least, curious.
And we’re already doing it, whether it’s the bits of Irish on clues in The Traitors or shouted outside British courts.
The Swiftie era jumper stays, though. Even if I have to wear it myself.
- Colm loves words of any language. In fact, he’s written a book, , which comes out October 30
