[Review] SHINee - Dream Girl

Vocals: 10 / 10

SHINee’s incredibly high vocal standard only increased with “Dream Girl”. Everyone but Minho had quality lines, which is acceptable. Taemin’s vocal prowess continues to expand, as I felt he had a bigger presence throughout than Key or Onew. Minho even had multiple lines, improving the line distribution aspect of SHINee that was already pretty solid. The background “Woo” or whatever during the chorus was fairly well placed, in contrast to say “One Shot” from B.A.P. A shame Jonghyun’s brilliance at the end was not more loud but still awesome work by him. Catchy and explosive vocals from SHINee once again.

Appearance: 8 / 10

To any other group, the intensity of the colours, makeup, and outfits would be too much, but for SHINee, this is also another standard that has become very familiar to Shawols. Some say this was over the top for even SHINee, but I disagree. Everything seemed pretty natural, with Jonghyun and Minho leading the group. Onew is always hit or miss with me and it’s another miss this time, the crimson and cut not really framing his face well. Speaking of miss, Key is also mediocre, the blonde is not a good look for him at all. Nice pants by the way.

Dance: 7 / 10

While the vocals didn’t disappoint, the choreography did, for once. SHINee (and S.M.) are known for their fabulous dances, which when performed live are incredible to watch, along with live vocals. However, this dance, is just average. They use props, yeah, but it’s not interesting in any way. Live performances of “Dream Girl” are really only for the singing, since the dancing is not up to usual par. The only thing this dance has going for it is the “Manager version” of the choreography by the various S.M. managers.

Rap: 8 / 10

Woah. Minho rapping something good? Definitely did not expect that. It was easy to predict that his parts would be a buildup to the final chorus but I thought the rap was well executed, and being “average” compared to other higher quality rappers is good enough for Minho. The English was somewhat laughable but that’s alright, no one judges too harshly for that to begin with, and SHINee is known for using some of the most…interesting English lines to date.

Music Video: 7 / 10

A few things here. I felt like there was a lot of missed potential. Firstly, the “dream girl” in question has like 5 total seconds of screentime. At least in TVXQ’s “Mirotic” she was a centerpoint of the story. With all the sleeping, waking up, and falling back to sleep cuts, I thought there could have been more…you know interaction between the members of the girl. Perhaps in a dream or something. Even if it’d be creeping on her like in “Replay”. I also thought the use of mics / mic stands for the choreography could have given them a sort of stage presence (like say performing for an audience) but that was not used either. Finally, the use of fancy colours, video effects, and versatile camera angles was nice to look at at first, but eventually become really disruptive to the rest of the music video. Next time, more plot, less fancy extras.

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Overall: 80 / 100

SHINee delivers in voice, and basically nothing else. But that’s fine, the song is noteworthy because of its chorus, which is good enough for me. The choreography could be ramped higher to SHINee standard, and the music video was certainly a different twist resulting in the typical S.M. music video outcome. Maybe they made everything else subpar for Minho’s rap to stand out. *Gasp*