[Review] Miss A - Only You

It's getting to that busy time of the semester, where life just swarms me and I try my damnedest to get stuff written on a regular basis. I promise the revised rapper writings are coming. But hey look! Miss A is coming back. Let's talk about them for a bit. Miss A's most recent release was the strong "Hush" which was only held back by the not-as-stellar video. Can the bright "Only You" do better?

I'll admit, when I saw this title I immediately though of the hook from 9MUSES' "Drama," but thankfully the chorus of this song is in Korean. Musically, this song is an intermediate between past releases of "Hush" and "I Don't Need A Man." It's not nearly as intense as "Hush" was in terms of the instrumental and sound but isn't as cute and quirky as "I Don't Need A Man" either. Whether or not this is a nice medium between those songs remains to be seen, I'll have to listen some more before I form an opinion. Back to the "Drama" mention though, I was rather disappointed to find that like "Drama," there was no extra power vocals at the end of the song, despite the group not having a star vocalist. This and the combination of not having a rap was questionable, since Jia is a potent rapper and the song definitely could have used a little more punch. Taking the rest of the song into account, Jia probably could have had a rap inserted into the song somewhere, but I appreciate that she was given part of the bridge to sing, since she would have been underrepresented otherwise without a rap segment.

Don't get me wrong, miss A still sounds very good as individuals and together. They may not have their own "Eunji" or "Taeyeon" but Min does a good job leading the pack. Suzy and the rest have nice support vocals. I wonder how many times I've said this about this group. It's a bad sign, since it means that their music never does anything extraordinary, and that this has been a recurring formula for whatever reason. The last time I thoroughly enjoyed a miss A song (concerning vocals) was probably "Goodbye Baby." That was a long time ago.

Why is there are a 12+ rating on this video? Outside of the drinking(?) at the club set, I thought the drinking age in Korea was 19. If it's the creeper / angles and body visuals, Korean MV's have seen far worse. The outfits that aren't pink were rather pleasant. Now I am a man that can appreciate some pink, but was a little too much, that or the outfits just weren't that good to begin with. Perhaps the outfits also contributed to my lack of impression on the choreography, which seemed rather bland. At least the dancing in "Hush" and "Goodbye Baby" was interesting.

At the end of the day, I'm rather disappointed in "Only You." The vocals are average at best and nothing really helps drive the song. The video and the numerous scene changes are nice, but the creeper creeping on the girls is rather awkward and the part where they dance at the creeper is even more awkward. There's nothing impressive in the choreography and Jia misses out on a chance to impress, even having a mediocre rap a la Woori in "Black Swan" might have been better than nothing at all.

[ Overall: 70 / 100 ]