Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
EXO just released “Lotto” off their repackage album, and it leaves me with regret of how much of a missed opportunity this was.
The instrumental itself actually had me bopping my head, and it was hard not to enjoy the infectious nature of the underlying beat. The potential with this was immense, but it unfortunately remains potential because for whatever reason they decided to auto-tune the fuck out of basically the entire song, making all of them sound like some kind of low budget Akon trying to mask the fact that they can’t stay in tune by distorting the hell out of their voices or something.
Is it EXO or is it some random dude’s demo? Nobody knows! Exactly what I want from my artists, complete anonymity and zero feel for their ownership of a track.
The worst part is that the auto-tune only get more pronounced as they exit the verses because the volume builds in the pre-chorus and the bridge, which somehow managing to exacerbate the already terrible problem. As much as I would like to focus on other things, the auto-tune dominates the song and thus sorta dominates how you feel about the track.
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The music video, much like the song’s title would imply, is about gambling and then the police chasing them down or something. The colors are predictably dark and ominous, and while their styling’s on point, it’s painfully obvious that this was filmed in a “box” as everything feels constrained.
That said, can’t expect a whole lot more from a repackage, and the choreography definitely looks interesting. It’s unfortunate that we don’t get to see more of it here, because it was a lot more engaging of a spectacle than the music video and its “plot”.
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I hate the auto-tune on this track, and thus I disliked “Lotto” because it’s basically auto-tune, loud auto-tune, and screaming auto-tune. The music video itself didn’t do a whole lot to change my mind about the song, but I do think the choreography should be entertaining in itself at least.
Oh well, no biggie, it’s just a repackage single anyway. Plus, I always wanted to feel like we were back in 2009.
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‘Lotto’
