[Review] T-ARA - Sugar Free

With the recent collapse of Girls’ Generation, T-Ara find themselves as a group of the previous guard with the original roster in tact. Despite the additions and removals of a few members, T-Ara returned with “Sugar Free,” which at a glance seemed like some promotional campaign for healthy lifestyles or something, and I keep hearing soda cans being opened.

The song is quite bland. Soyeon has the bulk of the work but not only does she carry the chorus but she shows up in the verses, too. The chorus itself is pretty bland, and the verses a mixture of rap-singing from Hyomin and Qri. Based on that, I guess the prechorus is the best part of the song, though the intro is strong, too, thanks to the instrumental. Speaking of which, this is what saves the song. The instrumental is killer and really generates energy and power for this otherwise mediocre song.

I’d like to see more vocal diversity in future T-Ara. Eunjung, Hyomin, and Jiyeon aren’t spectacular but they also aren’t pushovers. Qri and Boram are somewhat filler material but aren’t awful, either. A medium-paced dance track with more evenly distributed lines would probably hook me, honestly.

The video is a complete clusterfuck of seizure-inducing eye candy. That’s the simplest way I can describe it. I remember the first time I watched the MV for “I Go Crazy Because Of You” and I thought that was ridiculous, but this is probably worse. And when you consider there are multiple versions of the MV for some reason, the effect is compounded. Oh and don’t worry, all variants are just as crazy colourful and switch perspectives more often than you’d like. The choreography seems particularly lazy, but when your eyes hurt so much from the constant scene changing, you don’t get to see the dance too much. Again, the intro was pleasant but everything else looked very basic and unimpressive all around. This is a shame, since the instrumental is so damn good that I expected more out of the dance.

T-Ara stock will continue to rise as the aftermath of Girls’ Generation, combined with the death of Wonder Girls, restructure of KARA, etc. They are one of the 2 relatively unscathed flagship girl groups of the previous era (the other being 2NE1).

[ Score: 82 / 100 ]

[Review] Ailee - Don't Touch Me

The diva who competes for the title of “Korea’s Beyonce” returns with “Don’t Touch Me,” and as a follow-up to the likes of “I’ll Show You” and “U&I,” I’m…somewhat disappointed.

Ailee is known for the explosive vocals that we’ve seen from her since even before debut. However, I think this is one of her weakest showings yet, but let me clarify. The problems i have with this song are all in the chorus. It’s usually a distinct line between when a singer is hitting the notes and when she (or he!) is reaching for them, but to me almost all of the high notes in this chorus are reaches, and they are not graceful reaches. To be honest, there may be and probably are other factors to why I feel this way. Her high notes in previous songs like “I’ll Show You” were also reaches, but I never really had problems with them. It’s interesting, to say the least.

The verses are absolutely divine. Ailee’s least impressive area had always been her lower register, and “Don’t Touch Me” brings out her lower notes powerfully and smoothly. The bridge is also pretty solid, in a year where I consider a majority of the songs to have stronger starts and weaker finishes, Ailee comes in the middle for both.

As for the video, it’s nothing special. The set for the first chorus reminded me of some of the backgrounds in “U&I” which unfortunately reminds me of how much weaker I think this song is in comparison. But the key difference in this video and the others is how damn skinny Ailee has gotten. Apparently she lost 22 pounds for this comeback? Why? Ailee always possessed a healthy image, and like Hyosung, there was no real reason to lose the weight. Her appearance is much more frail, almost to the point where it’s unsettling. This is especially true during the bridge, I could hardly bring myself to watch. Please bring that weight back!

I do not think this was Ailee at her best. The chorus is unstable and the bridge is forgettable. Curious weight loss hurts her image and makes the supposed standard eye candy a little painful. That being said, she’s made impressive progress with her low range and that manages to hold the song together.

[ Score: 80 / 100 ]

[Review] Secret - I'm In Love

Secret is back, and after Hyosung’s decent “Goodnight Kiss” we are graced with “I’m In Love”, complete with English intro by Hyosung. Secret continues to bounce back and forth between aegyo and mature, and “I’m In Love” was poised to deliver the latter.

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Vocals: 9 / 10

Secret (read: Jieun) is just divine. Alright to be fair Hyosung is a really good compliment voice to Jieun, and Hana has shown she can pull her weight since the days of “Poison” and “Talk That”. Poor Sunhwa though, poor girl is more Dasom than Dasom was in “Touch My Body”. If anything, Secret’s vocal composition has never really been kind to her, oh well. Back to Jieun though, this girl is pretty much perfect. She has a very clean voice but can always reach for those high notes to make you shiver. I’d love to give this song a perfect score for vocals but the bridge just doesn’t work for me. The tempo change is too sudden and doesn’t blend with the rest of the song. Coincidentally, I think the bridge in Hyosung’s “Goodnight Kiss” meshes better with this song.

Dance: 7 / 10

Meh. Some parts of the dance were better than others. The more graceful lying down on the ground and some of the shifting around positions was pretty good but most of the other movements seemed erratic and not well focused. Maybe I’m just lying to myself but I have yet to watch the dance practice video so I may be completely wrong.

Rap: 8 / 10

Hana is a staple in the top 10 of girl group rappers, so I was quite disappointed in the rap for a few main reasons. The first is that, like the bridge, the tempo was slower than the more frantic pace of the rest of the song. Second, it was way shorter than anything could do her justice. Last, the rap seemed pretty tame and Hana is capable of fantastic ferocity in her raps. Not so much a swing and a miss as it was an awkward hit to the side.

Music Video: 6 / 10

I have committed to giving a score of 6 for any stereotypical video (which includes boxes, solo shots, fanservice, etc.) and adding or subtracting from there based on stuff like outfits, appearance, etc. Speaking of, the girls look great. Not a fan of Hyosung’s bangs (didn’t really work in “Love Is Move” either), but everything else is genuine eye candy. Hana is probably my favourite visual out of the group, and has been since “Poison”. Anyway there isn’t much to be said about the video besides Secret being smirky and emotional. How lame.

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Overall: 76 / 100

Secret comes back with vengeance, striking hard with a mature and sexy sound in “I’m In Love”. While not the superstar that “Love Is Move” was, it can remind us of how a consistent sound and Jieun’s incredible vocals really really help Secret when they’re being serious. …please no more aegyo stuff. Secret syndrome has existed for too long.

[Review] Hyuna - Red

Continuing with the “red” releases, we have Korea’s #1 sex kitten in Hyuna, with “Red”. Playing off a children’s rhyme, Hyuna is looking for a chance to redeem herself, since I consider her career on a downward trend with both 4minute and solo releases since “Change”.

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Vocals: 9 / 10

To clarify, I’m only considering the prechorus as the vocals. Everything else is either rapping or chanting, which is obviously not singing. Anyway, this prechorus is glorious. It’s probably the best of any song released thus far this year, and still contests for one of the best all time in any Korean music. It’s just that good. The crescendo / buildup is pristine and right before the active chorus, there’s that shouting / howling going on which wasn’t as terrible as I thought it’d be. Probably makes more sense given all the monkey references.

Dance: 8 / 10

This dance was just casual twerking to me. At the very least, this choreography was a lot more tame than I had expected, coming off the heels of “Bubble Pop” and “Ice Cream”, both of which are releases I don’t want to watch more than once so I’m not going to backtrack and check. There was that one move where she does a split or something? Seems random and out of the blue. Still, the fact that I went in expecting some Stellar or 4Ladies’ choreography and was surprised is a good turn of events.

Rap: 8 / 10

Despite Hyuna’s nasally voice, the rapping was pretty good here. The flow is good and Hyuna shows that she’s still the lead rapper in 4minute, since I don’t think Jiyoon could do as well as she did. The chanting of the chorus is energetic and all, but severely weakens in the 2nd half. As for the chorus itself, I know it’s referencing a children’s rhyme, interchanging her own name within the lyrics, so talk about serious product placement. The amount of times you’ll hear “Hyuna” in this song is way more than the amount of times you saw “body” text in Sistar’s “Touch My Body”. As amazing as the prechorus was in “Red”, the rapping more than holds its own.

Music Video: 7 / 10

Standard boxes, multiple camera angles, and extreme fanservice are the trifecta of Hyuna’s videos and there’s no changes here. Considering the excessive use of “Hyuna” and monkeys, there were quite a number of both in this video. Despite the monkeys and crazy partying in the video, it’s pretty bland. I won’t call it boring since the partying looked fun and saying that’s “boring” is just being rude. Nonetheless it’s a pretty mediocre MV but I will give bonus points for the monkeys.

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Overall: 80 / 100

“Red” is certainly no “Change” (Hyuna’s best solo title), but it’s actually a solid song that while a little repetitive, has good rapping supported by a beautiful prechorus which holds onto the hype and high energy feel of the song. It’s not much of a change of pace as it is a different step forward for Hyuna, who has failed me the last couple of years.

[Review] f(x) - Red Light

With Sulli’s “recovery” (might write a blog about this, not convinced yet) and f(x) taking a hiatus, I figured let’s backtrack a little and talk about the recent release of “Red Light”. The girls have been on a confusing roller coaster, with a strong showing in “Electric Shock” followed by a weak rebound in “Rum Pum Pum Pum”. Hopefully “Red Light” will bring the cycle around.

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Vocals: 5 / 10

This song has around four phases, all with different tempo, melodies, etc. and the transitions are mediocre at best. Some of the earlier transitions are good, but towards the end everything seems to fall apart and collapse on itself. I don’t know why but S.M. really struggles with effective transitions compared to YG (2NE1’s “I Love You”) and JYP (JJ Project’s “Bounce”). If this series of lines sounds familiar, that’s because I used the exact same lines from SNSD’s “I Got A Boy” review. This song in a nutshell is a version of “I Got A Boy” specifically tailored to f(x). So with all that being said, it’s not very good. Individual pieces could potentially work well if the whole song was in the same vein but that’s not the case. The bridge is beautiful, and much like EXO’s “Wolf”, is amazing and would’ve really complimented a good song. But unfortunately, this isn’t. And unlike “I Got A Boy”, none of these individual mini segments are as good. There’s some form of rapping but they’re minimal (also not that good either) and not worth talking about.

Dance: 7 / 10

Not sure how I feel about this dance. It’s not quite the usual “f(x)” choreography if I may coin that sort of term. Either way, the MV never gave too much vision of the dance but unusual dance is not the same as bad dance. For recent comparison, it’s not extremely awkward like Sistar and it’s not cute like Girl’s Day. It’s serious and kinda refreshing and there’s many changes of pace, but this works better with choreography than vocals. All in all an average showing here from f(x).

Music Video: 8 / 10

What the hell is happening in this MV? There’s dark colour schemes and burning books and everyone has an eye patch sometimes and their makeup is weird… This is all happening in some broken down warehouse, too. Kudos to the girls for not using a box set for the 30th time. And honestly I appreciate a video with so much stuff going on I can’t follow much more than the bland stereotypical video of close-ups and boxes. Victoria looks flawless per usual, but again, the weird makeup and eye patches were confusing. Oh well.

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Overall: 67 / 100

S.M. is struggling this year. And that’s a phrase only speaking from a music frame of reference, not including all the political problems. Anyway, “Red Light” is a flawed variant of the already poor “I Got A Boy” of their labelmates from a year ago. A good quality video and excellent bridge is not able to rescue the jarring sound of the rest of the song. It’s honestly an improvement from “Rum Pum Pum Pum” but not by much. Here’s hoping this isn’t the end of f(x)’s light.