[Review] TVXQ - Humanoids

Vocals: 7 / 10

Honestly, this song doesn’t have many impressive things happening in terms of vocals. Sure, the chorus is relatively high but other than that, it’s pretty ordinary. What I do like though, is the experiment S.M. did with abnormal vocal rhythm and patterns which we haven’t really seen. While the disastrous “Flower Power” of SNSD was just messy all around, this song’s mechanics work well together, but a lack of anything powerful out of Changmin keeps this score average.

Appearance: 9 / 10

Yunho’s hair got shorter, right? I can’t really tell but at least the style certainly looks like it’s shorter than when it was in “Catch Me”. Changmin looks solid per usual, but god everything is just too boring (see the music video portion) so I can’t really talk about much. In contrast to the similar uniforms of “Catch Me”, this gives Yunho and Changmin unique outfits in the colourful shirts as opposed to the blank / plain ones of the backup dancers.

Dance: 8 / 10

Now this dance I like, mostly because the type of movements matches the song (or at least the music video set anyway) with the sharp robotic movements. The integrated choreographies in “Catch Me” were cool but this style is more appealing in my opinion. On a side note to that though, since the choreography is very linear (nothing different from what the backup dancers are doing, excluding dance breaks), it was weird to try and make both members stand out with the different / bright coloured shirts.

Music Video: 4 / 10

Oh look, Yunho and Changmin are wearing fancy clothes. Oh look, Yunho and Changmin are locked in a fancy room. Oh look, all they’re doing is dancing and having close-ups. Oh look, they both have the same room in the solo shots. What else isn’t new? I’m just going to keep this section at that, because there really isn’t anything else to talk about.

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Overall: 70 / 100

S.M. has been pretty disappointing lately. “Maxstep” was okay at best, and “Flower Power” a disaster I never want to speak of, “Humanoids” falls in line and it’s just a decent song with a boring ass MV. Supposedly two more groups are to come from S.M. during 2013, so I hope they at least attempt to make some higher quality stuff. Then again, seems like S.M. has always been about quantity and not quality.