[Review] CLC - Hobgoblin

I've been looking forward to this. With a title like "Hobgoblin," CLC were sure to catch attention no matter what the song sounded like. CLC had been attempting to carve out a niche for themselves with previous tracks like "No Oh Oh." But then you had the teaser, which clearly showed a departure from the classic CLC sound. Out go the traditional dance pop theme, in comes something more serious, potentially more badass. Lord knows we need more of these types of concepts for girl groups nowadays, so I was likely to welcome this change with open arms regardless of quality of song.

Granted, a darker mature theme only reminds me (and all of us) of 4minute, and that's exactly what "Hobgoblin" is. From the heavy usage of rap in the verses, melodic prechorus, and repetitive hook / chorus, everything is 4minute reincarnate. Before continuing on, I'd like to express my thoughts behind the "4minute cloning" matters. There could be different reasons why Cube pursued this path. Maybe previous songs weren't doing as well as they'd like. Maybe they're desperate to pick up where 4minute left off. Regardless, I for one enjoy this because it's a more niche market. Outside of Black Pink, who is ready going with the girl group power motif? 2NE1 and 4minute were the leading players in that field and both are gone. It's only natural for their successor groups to follow in their footsteps. Besides, there will be accusations of being copycats from all angles for all groups. It's simply water under the bridge.

[Review] Hello Venus - Mysterious

This is Hello Venus' debut on my blog. One of my goals this year (for my blog specifically) is to expand my comfort zones in terms of who I review. The first step would be to review more boy groups and soloists. The next step is the review the girl groups who don't get enough exposure. While it's still important for me to get the Sistars and Apink's of the world since that keeps me updated for future Power Ranking pieces, but it's high time I expand my tastes. Hello Venus' 2016 comebacks were rather quiet, but "Mysterious" proved to be a return to more exciting times.

Full disclosure: I haven't been fully acquainted with every member aside from Lime and Alice, but it's a work in progress. But for starters, nobody in Hello Venus will really "wow" you with their vocals. Yeah their individual voices aren't anything special but also their style of music rarely puts emphasis on it. Anyway, Alice is probably their best vocalist and she's pretty much average in every respect. Despite having said all that, Hello Venus are right at home in this kind of song. "Mysterious" is essentially a softer version of "Sticky Sticky," accompanied by a fun instrumental and the whistling hook that feels like it's everywhere.

[Review] AOA - Excuse Me

AOA is back after the disappointing "Good Luck," Japanese promotions, and hiding from controversy. We would be treated to double title tracks and contrary to what I normally do, I'm going to review what I think is the worse song (but it's not by much). if I was less lazy, I'd do a double review (I believe the only time this has ever happened was NCT) but we're already so late. Despite not including the song in Girl Group Power Rankings, I've now listened to this song enough times to have concrete opinions about it. Also new banners along with a new structure / setup, sort of!

Let's address the elephant in the room: this chorus is not very good. Or rather, the "baby cuse me cuse me" part. As far as I know, that isn't a real word and this usage is not appreciated. I understand it would sound very clunky to have "excuse me" repeated but it just straight up sounds bad the way it is. AOA's recent trend is to start the song off with a piece of the chorus (dating back to "Heart Attack") so that made me uncomfortable the whole rest of the way.

[Misc] Girl Group Visual Power Rankings Revisited

Why do I write the Visual Power Rankings? There are a variety of reasons. First it's because I've covered rapping, singing, group, and bias ranks before. Adding in visuals and appearances is not only appropriate given how the Kpop industry works, but also because it's another category to do some rank crunching. The only category I've yet to touch is dancing, but that's something that I can't even bullshit my way into writing even if I tried. Instead I may attempt a version of Girl Group Power Rankings where I focus on their choreographies, but that presents its own challenges: promotion material only, different career lengths, etc. Here are my picks for the most beautiful faces and members going into 2017.

12. Hyosung (-3) / 11. SinB (NEW) / 10. Tzuyu / 9. Suzy (-1)

Like Hwasa and Chorong on the Bias List, Hyosung falls to "last" but it's not her fault. Everyone else has stepped up. Speaking of, SinB makes her grand debut because she's the undisputed center of GFriend and combined with her focus during dancing keeps my eyes glued to her in performances. Tzuyu and Suzy represent the overwhelming lead visuals of their groups, even though the former has plenty of competition (Mina, Sana, etc.) and the latter is practically an actress at this point. Although Suzy is making her solo debut soon, so there's that to watch out for.

[Misc] Bias Power Rankings VII: Early 2017

Unlike the Girl Group Power Rankings from yesterday, the first installment of my Bias Power Rankings this year will include the most recent comebacks. Namely, AOA with "Bing Bing" and "Excuse Me," the latter of which will be reviewing sometime next week. Or soon. Hopefully soon. Anyway, here are my favorite Kpop girls after the wild whirlwind year of 2016.

Honorable Mentions: Seungyeon / Choa / Victoria / Sojin

Seungyeon makes her debut with the other honorable mentions for being the jack-of-all-trades in CLC. With AOA's comeback, I don't know how to feel about Choa's growing hair. Sometimes it looks elegant and other times very awkward. Victoria and Sojin are the older members of this list, and continue to stay in this range thanks to a lack of comebacks music-wise. I considered cutting out this section but at the same time it's nice to know who are the hopefuls looking to jump into the top 12.

[Bonus] Girl Group Power Rankings IV: Early 2017

Quick, before AOA makes their comeback! Too late? Okay, quick! Before I review their comeback! Here are my Girl Group Power Rankings going into the start of 2017. As per usual(?), the main components of each group I'll be look at are the quality of their music, consistency (both music-wise and promotion-wise), potential and talent. Stuff like chart placings, show winnings, variety appearances, and general popularity aren't as important to me, because if they don't have good music I don't really care how popular they are. But they do still play a factor, of course. The music factor will only be accounted for the period between the previous Power Ranking. So for this series, only content from around July was considered, but will also include anything I may have missed. Alright no more introductions, let's get cracking.

Honorable Mention: Girl's Day
* New Releases: N/A
Enough is enough. Girl's Day is the only group on this list that has not released anything in over a year. They can only go by on their legacy for so long. Thankfully they haven't reached After School-levels of a disappearing act, with members still being productive through acting adventures and variety show appearances. Hyeri is still making it rain and their ever-elusive comeback should help bring them back into the spotlight. They have plummeted from the #1 spot in September of 2015, but with a comeback in January, they'll look to go on a revenge tour for all the ranks they've dropped.

Honorable Mention: Red Velvet
* New Releases: Russian Roulette, Always In My Heart (Joy)
Red Velvet retain their Honorable Mention placing from the summer. This is mostly due to the ineffectiveness of "Russian Roulette," which in my eyes is their worst showing since their dreadful debut. It's still a solid C- song but that ain't quite good enough to push themselves into the top 10. Joy also had an opportunity with Station that she took full advantage of, which highlights one thing about Red Velvet that often goes underappreciated: they have solid voices from top to bottom. The duet with Seulong proves it. Better news / hype is that we should be slated for a Velvet comeback, which will have more soft tunes in store.

#10. Wonder Girls (--)
* New Releases: Why So Lonely
Wonder Girls aren't new to the #10 spot, which was their previous location back in fall of 2015. They had inhabited one of the Honorable Mention placings for most of last year but thanks to the wonderful "Why So Lonely" EP, they've managed to get back to this spot. Wonder Girls are extremely well-balanced. They have Yubin who is one of the best girl group rappers, Sunmi and Yeeun who are solid vocalists (with established material as individuals to boot), and a retro band theme that they own (when was the last time you saw a girl group band in Kpop). Dance is no longer their emphasis as it was back in the day but that's to be expected when everyone is playing instruments now.

[Blog] Kpop Hopes In 2017

Woah. My first post in 2017 will coincidentally be post #300 on the blog. That's pretty cool. Anyway, there are some writings I want to get to right away, but I also wanted to start off the year simple. Here's a blog post that will gloss over what are my hopeful wishes for Kpop in 2017. Like some of my other posts, these will range from somewhat realistic to "please I'd give up my left leg if this happens." I can think of no other way to kick off 2017 with these lighthearted thoughts.