Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Idol girl band MARMELLO recently dropped “PUPPET“, which I think is their debut. While the concept itself is enough to get some attention, the song itself is deserving as well even if the template is a bit generic.
Rather than going the quasi-BABYMETAL route like DREAMCATCHER, MARMELLO are going more the quasi-SCANDAL route, and they’re going to do a pretty good job of it if “PUPPET” is anything to judge by.
Admittedly my initial temptation was to call “PUPPET” generic since they aren’t exactly re-inventing the wheel here with either concept or pop-rock sound, but much like with DREAMCATCHER, I feel like MARMELLO eventually rise above the generic label. That’s primarily due to a earworm of a hook punctuated by “puppet puppet pow” that continues to grow on you after multiple listens, and the foot-tapping fail-safe of an instrumental that is difficult to get wrong.
The music video itself is understandably bare, but the initial watch is the best because it had some nice moments of surprise as they transition from a bubblegum-pop girl-group look to something more befitting their likely direction.
After some research, I was a bit surprised to discover that according to their Instagram, they’ve been together since 2015.
https://www.instagram.com/p/-LP1yxoCHb/
So they’ve actually been playing events for a while now and the polish seems to show well.
“PUPPET” is a great start to MARMELLO’s career as they executed the pop-rock formula effectively, even if it was a bit safe. Going forward, I’m curious to see whether they keep this type of sound or whether they experiment with something harder or just different, but thankfully it doesn’t seem like we’ll be having an AOA situation here.
