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Unhelpful Guide to K-Pop: Positions

Updated: Oct 9, 2020

You might hear Main Dancer, or Sub Vocalist and go like what the heck does that mean? I'm here to explain.

Leader


The Leader of a group is often the oldest of the group, although there are many exceptions to this. There are often leaderless groups as well, like BLACKPINK and JYPE's Miss A.


Vocalist


Main Vocalist


The Main Vocalist is known to have the best vocal ability out of the group, although there are exceptions to this, such as a Main Vocalist being appointed due to their unique voice rather than their vocal technique and range. (This situation is from 2NE1: Minzy was a Lead Vocal but was the strongest vocalist while Bom was the Main and yet was weaker in skill than both Minzy and CL, but due to her unique tone and because she was more focused on singing.) They often get a solo part during a song and sing a lot of the song.


Lead Vocalist


The lead vocalist is the 'back up' vocalist. There are often multiple in a larger group and they have the second strongest vocals of the group. They sing before the main vocalist, hence their name, 'Lead'.


Sub Vocalist


The sub vocalist support the main and lead vocalists, and often focus more on rapping or dancing than vocals.

 

Rappers


Main Rapper


The Main Rapper gets most of the rapping parts, usually the one with the best technique and rapping skills, they can sometimes be the Main Rapper due to their ability to express emotions through rapping, over the technique.


Lead Rapper


The Lead Rapper commonly begins rapping parts, skills are usually good as well, but 2nd to the Main Rapper.

 

Main Dancer


Main Dancers have great dancing skills, focuses less on singing or have fewer lines in songs or may have only sub-vocal-parts (breath needs to be saved for dances), usually will get solo dance parts.


Lead Dancer


During, whole group dance parts, the Lead Dancer will lead the group and dance in front, when all are dancing together. Their dancing ability is second to the Main Dancer.

 

Visual


Visuals are a massive part of K-Pop, there is often a person who is deemed the 'prettiest' by Korean standards, they are called the visual.


Maknae


The Maknae is the youngest member of the group, they don't have a special task but are often associated with being cute and shy, although many maknaes have established an image that is the complete opposite.


4D


This position isn't official, it's assigned by fans, to the weirdest person of the group who often: Says the most random and puzzling things on TV, posts funny pictures of themselves on Twitter and generally enjoys being different. To be clear, this is not an insult.


Oki and there we go, all the positions, I popped a song link below that may or may not work but it's called ICY by ITZY and it's pretty good.

Bibliography:


Due to some issues with my website, I can't seem to insert pictures.

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