I’m seeing “stream black swan” trending a lot today on Twitter.  So I thought I’d come up with this help post to let you all know about “Black Swan” and why you should stream!

A lot of people are excited about “Black Swan” and are telling people online that they should “STREAM BLACK SWAN”.  But what is “Black Swan”?

It’s easy to get confused!  It’s not the movie folks.  No, “Black Swan” is a k-pop song.  A very, very good k-pop song.

The high quality of “Black Swan” can’t be denied.  Many k-pop fans are getting emotional about not being able to stream “Black Swan” as much as they would like to be able to.

It’s such a good song that this Twitter user wants to listen to it over and over again, but they realise that to make sure “Black Swan” attains the maximum number of YouTube views they can’t just loop it, but they have to stream it in specific ways that seem “organic” to YouTube’s algorithm.  You can read more about these procedures here – the post pertains to Blackpink but the same knowledge can be applied to literally any k-pop group, including Rainbow.

So let’s talk about Rainbow.  They were a second-generation k-pop group that really didn’t get as much recognition as they should have during their lifespan.  Like almost any k-pop group they had some good songs as well as some not so good songs, but to my ear none were better than “Black Swan”.

“Black Swan” was extremely unpopular when it came out, even by Rainbow standards.  It appeared on very few music shows, as promotions were cut short after only two weeks no doubt due to the song’s extreme unpopularity.

This is quite a shame for fans of the song such as myself, as the song is exceptionally high quality and I would have liked to see more performances of it.

While an excellent song, the minimalist musical style that I really enjoyed was very different from k-pop’s sonic trends at the time and this probably at least partially contributed to the song’s commercial failure.  If you’re interested in more detail about why I like this song, you can check out my write-up of it on my favourite songs of 2015 list.

So I’m really pleased to see this fantastic song now trending, and seemingly so are many of my readers!  However it’s easy to get confused with other songs and artists with similar names.  So let’s not do that and make sure we’re streaming the right song.  For example, Rainbow did have subunits that could cause confusion with some k-pop fans.

Rainbow did an interesting marketing experiment during their active time as a group and had separate “cute” and “sexy” comebacks.  The “sexy” subunit was called “Rainbow Blaxx” and had a song called “Cha Cha”:

However Rainbow Blaxx were not responsible for “Black Swan”, which was actually a full group comeback from Rainbow, not a subunit.  So please don’t get these two mixed up.  I know, it can be tricky to get this right if you don’t follow k-pop closely, but that’s okay – it’s why I’m here to save you the trouble of keeping track of all this.  Anyway I think most people get it as the streaming of “Black Swan” has been trending highly.

In particular I’m noticing a lot of ARMYs (that’s the fandom for a k-pop boy group called BTS) encouraging people to stream “Black Swan” more than anybody else.

I’m honestly finding this support of an underrated group and song from such a huge k-pop fandom to be really encouraging, especially the recognition that second-generation girl groups like Rainbow “paved the way” for the current success of huge k-pop groups like Twice, Blackpink and others.  It makes me feel that perhaps in the past I’ve judged k-pop fandoms too harshly.

Many BTS fans are so keen to stream Black Swan that they’re even depriving themselves of sleep.  Don’t do that, folks!  By all means stream the song but remember that your own physical health should always be a priority.

This BTS fan helpfully suggests to his followers that between individual listenings of “Black Swan”, you might wish to pick another random song that you also like, just so you don’t fatigue yourself and can keep your appreciation of the song fresh.  Good looking out for your fandom there, friend!

If you, the lovely reader, want to do your part to stream “Black Swan”, it probably would help if while you stream, you also left a positive comment on their video.  You can keep it simple, such  such as the one above, or maybe a longer comment about the virtues of this song might be appropriate.  It’s entirely up to you!

Also be sure to spread the video among other users across all social networks.  Anyway I’ll leave the last word to the below Twitter user, and please do your part to help Rainbow get the recognition that they deserved back in 2015, and stream “Black Swan”!  Stay safe, caonimas!