It's only been 2 months since "Mirror," so in surprising and unexpected news, FIESTAR would be returning to the girl group landscape with "Apple Pie." With a title like that, I imagine we aren't going to be seeing much of the style of "You're Pitiful" and "Mirror," which is a shame. They owned the darker concept, especially considering not many other groups chose to be straight-up sexy in 2015. Still, a change of pace is a nice breath of fresh air, and as long as they release good music I've got nothing to complain about.
Looks like FIESTAR were going for the cuter route after all. The girls definitely sound sweet with their proclamations and this is a pretty safe type of song to be releasing. The key ingredient in "Apple Pie" is that Linzy (finally) gets to shine. She participates in all aspects of the song from the verses to chorus to bridge, similar to how Choa just took over "Good Luck" on her own. Even if the singing here doesn't showcase her potential to the fullest, this alleviates the pain from watching Linzy's talent get so underused in past songs.
"Save Me" is an appropriate title, as I'm saved from having to review "Fire" by opting for this song instead. I've praised BTS for being extremely consistent in their tracks since debut, but "Fire" was unfortunately lackluster. It's not that I wouldn't want to review a bad or less proficient song, but I'm just not feeling the negativity at the moment. So with "Save Me," we still get to review a BTS song while escaping the sadzone a little. This time around, it's yet another take on the BTS formula that is continuing to push this group higher and higher.
The song structure in "Save Me" is setup in a way that balances out the song. The singing has roughly a third of the runtime, the rapping has about a third, and the dance break has about a third. Well honestly the vocals take up more than that, obviously, but everything flows together without any awkward jumps. No one in this group is a standout vocals-wise, but they always seem to make ends meet. Jungkook and Jimin keep spearheading the group with their lighter voices, but V is really the member worth talking about. His voice is rich and unique, putting him in a special class of voices alongside iKON's Junhoe, Girls' Generation's Sunny, etc.: they aren't super talented, but when they're utilized properly their voice really makes takes the cake (yeah I just wrote that). It's worth noting V sounds his best in a lower range though ("War Of Hormone"). On another note, it's nice to see Jin getting some love. He's usually been relegated to scrapping by for lines, an unfortunate attribute shared by group fillers, but he teams up with V to provide a good buildup into the chorus.
It's time. Jessica Jung has embarked on her solo debut more than a year after leaving Girls' Generation. As she was the group's 2nd main vocalist, she's certainly capable of running a song on her own. The question then, is what kind of musical style would she go after, and would the results live up to expectations? Given that they debuted at pretty much the same time, I'm almost forced to try and compare Jessica and Tiffany's songs (also this clip has to be mentioned), but I'll try and keep that to a minimum, leaving those comments for maybe the final score section.
Honestly, it's difficult to avoid having a soft spot for Jessica. She was never my favorite member in the group - hell, not even top 5 during their prime - but considering the circumstances (what we know of, at least) having some sympathy for her is a given. Anyways, she does sound quite good in "Fly." Her light and airy voice works well with the softer instrumental that's mostly comprised of percussion. The song itself is light and has a bounce to it, and mixed with Jessica's beautiful soprano results in an soothing and uplifting sound. Her voice is more the selling point than anything else in the song, though admittedly I think somewhere in the mix, my newfound attraction of Krystal's voice is rubbing off on Jess now. Running in the family?
Tiffany is the next member of Girls' Generation to go solo. In an effort to perhaps go down a different route than Taeyeon, this track would seem to be all about dancing. As I raved about Taeyeon's solo debut, I feared that she may have set the bar too high, leaving the other members with unfortunate expectations that might not be met. Still, Tiffany is next best vocalist in SNSD so her solo makes sense from both a logic and music standpoint. And if "I Just Wanna Dance" is indeed about the dancing, then it'd be foolhardy to try and compare the debuts.
This song is smooth. Really smooth. Tiffany has rightful claims to one of the sexiest voices in Kpop and this shows why. She sounds alluring in "I Just Wanna Dance." Perhaps that's the magic in this type of slower dance track, providing multipurpose options in the choreography and singing. More importantly, Tiffany's tendency to reach for notes is not seen or heard (much) here. Often you'll hear her strain for those high notes ("Twinkle," "You Think") and she's yet to be consistent in hitting those well. She has always sounded more stable (and much more attractive) in the lower range and this song is a perfect exemplar of why.
AOA are on the verge of something historic. Since late 2013, they have released high-quality material and been on a run the likes of which no other girl group has seen. From "Confused" to "Heart Attack," this string has arguably eclipsed the best runs of other groups based on sheer number alone. But that's completely ignoring the greatness of "Miniskirt" and "Heart Attack," among others. "Good Luck" is AOA's opportunity to simultaneously chase after Girls' Generation for that #1 spot on the girl group ladder, and elevate themselves high enough above the other groups that they'd essentially be locked in at #2 at worst.
Alright, look. "Good Luck" is unquestionably a good song. It's similar to "Heart Attack" in that the chorus starts off the song. It's energetic, catchy, and has a pretty good instrumental to back it up. All of this is true, and a formula for success. However, something ominous lurks within the song, and that something causes problems and makes the song weaker than what it should be. And that ominous entity is the English. So what's wrong? For starters, there's simply too much bad English. There are songs that use a lot of good English well (BoA's "Kiss My Lips") and even those that use a lot of bad English well (Jessi's "Ssenunni") but this is one that uses a lot of bad English poorly. From the splattering of words everywhere to lyrics that don't make any sense (what does "I'm your lucky lucky" mean?), it's unfortunate to have a song like this ruined because there was potential here. In earlier drafts I wrote about three long paragraphs on the issues I had with the English but that was too much. Let this be a lesson learned that this much English used in this way doesn't produce good results for your track.
Lovelyz is next on the catchup reviews, having released "Destiny" about two weeks ago. They've had a successful start to their career, with a pair of energetic pop songs in "Candy Jelly Love" and "Ah-Choo," backed by complimentary ballads like "Goodnight Like Yesterday" and "Shooting Star," the latter half are what I believe are their best works. Will they go down the ballad path this time, or continue with what they've been known for and drop another bubblegum track on us?
Well, that was an unexpected start. Dramatic strings and loud voices off the bat were unexpected. Certainly caught me off guard, but with that kind of start, Lovelyz shows their serious side. There should be a term for this class of songs. You know that type, where a bright pop group releases a more serene and delicate song to show how they've got a more mature side to them as well. A-Pink had "Luv," GFriend had "Rough," and now Lovelyz has "Destiny." There's no coincidence, then, that these songs are the best-sounding (to me). It's easy to make a bubblegum pop song sound good, but not so easy for a ballad-esque song to sound great. And this sounds great, so Lovelyz deserve all the props for this release. Oh, and coming off the heels of my Twice review, it's good to see (hear) they didn't butcher the Englishe.
Now that the semester is over, I can finally start to (or attempt) catching up with the plethora of releases I've missed over the weeks. With that, I'm also going to be trying some new formatting images with the reviews. This will be a pilot review to see how future pieces will look under this new structure. Bear in mind, I'm no good with programs like Photoshop so this is all very ghetto. If everything looks good, this will officially start the 7th season of reviews!
Twice is a force to be reckoned with, quickly rising through the ranks since their debut with "Like Ooh-Ahh" and recently claimed the #9 spot for Girl Group Power Rankings. Now they've come back with "Cheer Up," and this is their chance to impress me. I like to think that for rookie groups, the 2nd release is perhaps even more important than the debut, because that determines whether or not you have staying power. Let's see how it goes.
What's up with Twice having really good choruses but subpar verses? This chorus is so lovely and really makes the song so much better. Jihyo and Nayeon are a good 1-2 vocal punch, and Jihyo definitely will be earning her stripes as the group progresses (awesome long note!). But I simply can't ignore the disaster that was the pronunciation of "cheer up" as "chol up." I'm sorry, I know Jihyo isn't a native English speaker, but when that is the title of your song, you should really get that right. Additionally, the various inflections throughout the song (for example, 0:41 and 1:15) don't sit well with me. I've never seen a song that uses those raises effectively and until proven otherwise I don't think I will ever like those.
We have had a good start to 2016. In the timespan of only four months, we have this year's top candidate for best song of the year, as well as a top candidate for best music video of the year. If you want to continue this path, the rapping throughout has also been good, leaving just the choreography department a little lacking, but we've still seen some performances worthy of making this trimester proud.
