[Review] Rainbow - Black Swan

 is back! This group has toggled between sexy and cute for the last couple of years, with nothing really able to stand up to the raw power and success of "A" and "Mach." This comeback and "Black Swan," however looked promising in terms of visuals and music, so let's see how they delivered.

Can we just appreciate the instrumental for a moment? It's very simplistic in nature but works really well to bring out the vocals of Rainbow, and is genuinely powerful. No one in the group is a power vocalist, so keeping the instrumental basic definitely helped the song. Hyunyoung sounds really good, and honestly has the rest of the team on her back. Jaekyung and Jisook have nice supporting roles but it's really Hyunyoung who is the star of the show in pretty much all aspects. The vocals by itself aren't anything too impressive, but with the crazy good instrumental, the lyrics sound much better by association. The combination of velvety voices and killer instrumental make for a pleasant combination.

However, the song starts to falter in the 2nd half. Nothing new is introduced and the drop for the rap by Woori was underwhelming to say the least. It was pretty much on Woori to put on a strong showing and have a good lead into the final chorus but she didn't deliver. The rapping was too slow and despite Hyunyoung's best attempt at recovering with the lovely belts the last minute or so just doesn't measure up to the beginning. This was Woori's last chance to show me some convincing evidence to put her above other rappers like Hana (psst! Updated Girl Group Rapper Power Rankings are coming in March!) but it's a shame that didn't go through.

The video is pretty much all we expected out of the teaser. It's creepy and beautiful, scary and elegant. Rainbow looks the best they have in a while, ever since the rather peculiar appearances of "Tell Me Tell Me." The entire MV is essentially fanservice and pretend peekings at their inner selves, some of which are apparently serial killers playing with blood? How eerie. The dance during the chorus is just your usual leg-revealing butt-shaking dance, but man does Hyunyoung look really damn good doing it. Must be all those hours spent at the gym.

In the end, what Rainbow showed with "Black Swan" is that they definitely have the potential to be a strong girl group contender. But, when you consider this was their strongest release since the days of "A" and "Mach," that doesn't look very good on your resume. Still, it's a catchy electronic number that unfortunately weakens in the latter half of the song.

[ Overall: 83 / 100 ]