[Review] Sistar - Give It To Me (Revisited)

The RNG spun the wheel and this is the winner for the next revisit. I considered going over Soyu's "Gotta Go" but the random number generator decided otherwise. Here's yet another girl group titan of years past with one of their most popular songs at the time. Sistar's "Give It To Me" was fast and exciting, but has it held up over the last seven years?

• Sistar really came back with an improved synchronized sound. Dasom and Soyou really stepped it up with the light high notes. Dasom’s English is a little strange sounding, as I heard “that’s what I mean” instead of “that’s all I need” but whatever. Hyorin is still flawless, belting at the end of choruses and the power notes at the song’s climax are amazing.

"Give It To Me" was released in the early era of Sistar stepping up their game. After "Alone" and "Loving U" achieved breakout success this was their follow-up and yeah, the synchronization and unified sound is everything. Hyorin (as with any singer) sounds the best when in their comfort range and she rocks her moments in the spotlight. Again this was during the sectioned years of reviews so the revisit will also feel clunky, oh well.

The line about Dasom's English is sort of awkwardly placed because there was no real transition in and out of it, but that speaks more about my ability to write back then...I think. Regardless, the vocals are still spectacular, bouncing between Hyorin's power bombs and Soyu's breathy lines.

• The outfits are flashy, a step up from “Alone” but that’s what the song is as a whole, a step up from “Alone” so it’s fitting.

I'll get to this in the conclusion but it's hilarious in retrospect that I found this song "a step up" from "Alone."

• Let’s be real. A Sistar choreography without butt emphasis? That’s new. Although let’s be real again, you couldn’t even tell when they were actually dancing because this music video was more obnoxious than T-Ara’s “I Go Crazy Because Of You” with the scene switching, so aside from the hip swaying at the chorus I couldn’t see anything. So for that, I’ll just give it a 7 for it being a standard dance that doesn’t go too far to get banned but is still sexy.

Let's be real. Me trying to talk about choreography in 2013 is just as cringe as me trying to talk about choreography in 2020. It's a decent dance but can't match the pinnacle of Sistar's career which was "Alone." The music video complaints will be emphasized later on in the original review but yeah my poor eyesight struggled with the obnoxious scene changes.

• I was rather disappointed with Bora’s rap this time around, in contrast to the popular opinion. I found the rap a little too slow for the beat / instrumental of the song, and was expecting something along the pace of the rapping in Nine Muses’ “Wild”.

My first mistake was expecting Bora to even attempt to do something that 9MUSES' Erin could do. At the end of the day it was actually a solid rap (in Bora's scale of potential) and one of her better performances overall, even if it didn't quite match the pacing of the rest of the song.

• This is T-Ara’s “I Go Crazy Because Of You” music video on crack. Seriously these scene changes are no joke and happen every two seconds at best. What makes this particularly obnoxious is that the scenes will change to (a) group shots, (b) solo shots, (c) a shot of members who aren’t even singing. It’s just very jumbled together and there are essentially no transitions.

Fun fact: I legit couldn't even sit through the full music video in current year. There's simply too much going on. I don't think we get a single shot of longer than three seconds before it jumps somewhere else. It's basically a conglomerate of tiny moments that make for a difficult watch that betrays the song's excellence.

• Even though the chorus is hyper-repetitive and uninteresting, the rest of the song is well executed by the voices of the members, and Bora’s rap serves as a decent transition to the whispering bridge before Hyorin’s power note. Collectively the vocals are very good and the dance is good enough (for what little we could see of it, at least). The music video is too flashy and jumpy, I’d much rather have a calmer box video like with “Alone” than the mess this was.

Surprisingly I did not talk much about how I felt about the song as a whole. Most of my ire was at the video itself, which is understandable since I actually attempted to write about music videos back in the day. But to call it better than "Alone," even if briefly, was a massive misplay. "Alone" was simply stronger in all aspects. Don't get me wrong though, "Give It To Me" is still an extremely solid song outside of the boring chorus. If I ranked all of Sistar's title tracks, it honestly might even be top three. Slightly prisoner of the moment in terms of the review but hey not too off-the-mark all things considered.