February 13, 2016

[Review] AOA Cream - I'm Jelly Baby

AOA's new subunit start the group's promotions with an ambiguously titled "I'm Jelly Baby" that lacks the punctuation needed to clarify exactly what's going on. AOA Cream is the 2nd subunit after AOA Black. While team Black was the band variant, team Cream is the underhyped variant, more or less. Hyejeong and Yuna have yet to gain traction as much as say Seolhyun or Jimin, and hardly anyone takes notice of Chanmi these days. It's nice to see FNC promote the less popular members, so long as this doesn't end up producing another episode of Sistar19.

Well, the good news is that there's no Sistar19 syndrome here. Naturally, having an extra member in the subunit certainly helps that cause. Line distribution for the vocalists is very fair, even if Yuna is significantly better than Hyejeong. Though whether through her own efforts or the nature of this song, Hyejeong does close the gap quite well. It could have been very easy for Yuna to overtake everyone and be the member of interest but thankfully that wasn't the case. Also worth noting is that they held back on the usage of random English, thankfully. On the other end of the spectrum, Chanmi gets a whopping 23 second rap, which is probably more than all of her previous rap appearances combined. This was a pleasant showing of both her rapping ability and getting time in the spotlight, especially since she basically has no singing lines. While Jimin remains the superior rapper, at least Chanmi has proven she is still capable (and has an infinitely better voice). Even if the song doesn't hold up, Chanmi's rap has quickly (already) taken over Serri's one in "Someone Like U" as the signature girl group rap of 2016. Not sure I approve of the bridge though. Usually bridges like that are signs of laziness, and certainly didn't add anything to the song.

This music video is...something. It's clearly based off Sailor Moon, what with all the magic and transformations and silly visual effects and all. Hyejeong catches her man cheating on her (an extremely extremely stupid decision if you ask me) and decides to exact some magical revenge with her buddies who are also part of the magic club. Revenge plots include a swift kick to the shins, making the new girl slap him across the face, teleporting randomly into his car to spook him, and...giving his coffee more cream? That last one seems odd, to say the least. Also, if the point of teleporting his chick away and then appearing in her place was to take his car, why bother with the nonsensical stuff and just teleport the guy away? Finally, the grand finale of the revenge scheme is to appear in front of him while he's all miserable and use a super magical spell to launch fireworks and confetti into the air and gloat in his face. Hmm.

Maybe they're trying to reach out to the non-AOA fans with this subunit, but if so, that's where I tend to shy away from this song. "I'm Jelly Baby" and AOA Cream show that the less popular members of AOA are still very talented and very pretty, however I'm not sure if this was the perfect song for that. Perhaps I've simply missed the hook, but it's more bland than the usual AOA song and just isn't cutting it for me.

[ Overall: 70 / 100 ]

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