[Review] SHINee - Dream Girl (Revisited)

SHINee recently had their anniversary, so let's check out an old classic of "Dream Girl." Remember that for whatever reasons, they hadn't registered a superstar track yet despite being five years into their career by the time "Dream Girl" released in 2013. Let's see how opinions changed in the six years since.

• SHINee’s incredibly high vocal standard only increased with “Dream Girl”. Everyone but Minho had quality lines, which is acceptable. Taemin’s vocal prowess continues to expand, as I felt he had a bigger presence throughout than Key or Onew. / Catchy and explosive vocals from SHINee once again.

Ha! That not-so-subtle burn of Minho. With a roster of Jonghyun, Onew, and Key, SHINee always brought the vocal firepower. I don't know the exact timeline, but this was most likely during Taemin's ascension into a higher plane of existence in the Kpop world. His progress is crazy: the difference between "Replay" and "Dream Girl" is only mirrored by the difference between "Dream Girl" and "Move" or other current material. The catchy tunes of this song still hold strong, and you always want to shout "dream girl" with the boys in each chorus.

• To any other group, the intensity of the colours, makeup, and outfits would be too much, but for SHINee, this is also another standard that has become very familiar to Shawols. Some say this was over the top for even SHINee, but I disagree.

Yeah I mean SHINee has never shied away from being flamboyant with their costumes. You can take any music video's outfits and drop them into an older (or newer) video and nothing would really change. Their style is forever, and only the technology around them has changed.

• While the vocals didn’t disappoint, the choreography did, for once. SHINee (and S.M.) are known for their fabulous dances, which when performed live are incredible to watch, along with live vocals. However, this dance, is just average. They use props, yeah, but it’s not interesting in any way. / The only thing this dance has going for it is the “Manager version” of the choreography by the various S.M. managers.

Gonna have to agree with this. SHINee has always had amazing choreography and "Dream Girl" doesn't really inspire anything despite the usage of mic stands. In the grand scheme of their dances, this ranks among the bottom for sure. Seriously though the manager version is amazing. I don't know why I didn't link it in the original review so here it is.

• Woah. Minho rapping something good? Definitely did not expect that. It was easy to predict that his parts would be a buildup to the final chorus but I thought the rap was well executed, and being “average” compared to other higher quality rappers is good enough for Minho.

Minho might have peaked during "Dream Girl." I'm being serious. It's no coincidence that their two best songs (in my pedestrian opinion) are "View" and "Married To The Music," neither of which carry a semblance of Minho rap. Same for their 2018 tracks.

• I felt like there was a lot of missed potential. Firstly, the “dream girl” in question has like 5 total seconds of screentime. / With all the sleeping, waking up, and falling back to sleep cuts, I thought there could have been more…you know interaction between the members of the girl. Perhaps in a dream or something. / Next time, more plot, less fancy extras.

"More plot, less fancy extras" should be my slogan for 99% of all Kpop music videos. And yeah the lack of the actual ream girl was odd. Maybe she was kept faceless and out of sight because the members have different tastes? Still seems like an odd omission at the end of the day, but it's a MV so who cares.

• SHINee delivers in voice, and basically nothing else. But that’s fine, the song is noteworthy because of its chorus, which is good enough for me. The choreography could be ramped higher to SHINee standard, and the music video was certainly a different twist resulting in the typical S.M. music video outcome. Maybe they made everything else subpar for Minho’s rap to stand out. *Gasp*

While I won't go back to check all conclusions, this was pretty spot-on for my early days reviewing songs. SHINee brought a powerful vocal performance, but everything else was lacking. Needless to say, "Dream Girl" did not really win me over at the time but became pretty solid over the years.