Busker Busker. Heard of 'em?
Probably not, but they're huge across the Pacific where 28-year-old drummer and Ohio native Brad Moore is one third of the group that just wrapped up a stint on Superstar K3, a wildly popular reality show in Korea that churns out K-Pop superstars. (That's Korean pop, of course, which had its first international mega-hit with "Gangnam Style.")
Moore is white, which makes him stand out, along with the fact that he knows very little Korean.
He met his band mates, guitarist and singer Jang Beom-Jun and bassist Kim Hyung-Tae, while he was teaching English in Korea. It was just six months ago they formed Busker Busker, and the grueling trip through the star-making reality show has been exhausting, as Moore described to the Pacific Standard.
After making the final episode, Busker Busker was quickly led away to a house where record execs waited with contract proposals. The group declined initially but relented and signed a contract with CJ E&M on the condition that they write their own songs and basically retain control of the entire process — from producers to playing their own instruments. Here's a snippet from the Pacific Standard piece where Moore describes his new fame and the rigors of how reality pop television sausage is made.
