Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Oh hey, I actually caught up with K-pop so I’m doing a relatively timely one this week. It’s also because there wasn’t much I wanted to review, but nevertheless!
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DAY6 – “Maybe Tomorrow”
DAY6 becoming the mainstream rock-ish group to breakthrough makes a lot sense as they’re typically on the softer and/or ballady side of things. Nothing wrong with that, but stuff like this it’s still well within the wheelhouse of the softer, emotional sounds the general public like, and not some widespread acceptance of rock by the public that some writers seem to be inferring, unfortunately.
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I-DLE – “Girlfriend”
I really wish they started off as I-DLE to save my OCD from that parentheses, but other than that, most of the group’s hallmarks are still there on this release. The whole thing sorta revolves around an attempt at an anthemic pop-punk hook, which is fine enough even with the “she’s really really like a good bae” lyric, but the sing-talking post-chorus wears on repeats. Lyrically it’s almost the opposite of Avril Lavigne‘s song of the same name, but no amount of “meaningful” girlbossing can compensate for an actual pop-punk anthem of a hook that it needed. Most importantly, the momentum of the latter isn’t killed by a perfunctory rap breakdown.
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ROSE (BLACKPINK) – “Messy”
For the F1 The Movie, and well … that happened. Sounds more made for like a melodrama breakup montage or something.
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VVS – “Purrfect”
I’m not the target demo for these songs that are clearly meant for fans to just mindlessly say “SLAYYY” over and over to, but I try to be open-minded about the musical ambitions. Still, it’s just a bit difficult to take these braggadocious lyrics serious in the same way it affects Korean hip-hop for me. I can still forgive that if it’s musically interesting, but these one-note productions with borderline annoying, droning hooks aren’t doing it. The Street Fighter concept is basically the best part about this.
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Ablume – “Echo”
Another group sorta chasing their own tail in terms of “Cupid” pursuit, but this comes with an even more jarring rap break. It’s safe and pleasant for the most part, and it might be the best of the bunch just because of the vocals hard-carrying. But as I’ve said over and over, when these types of songs lack an indelible chorus, they will always trend towards background stuff.
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MEOVV – “Drop Top”
This got off to a promising start with intrigue, but it becomes a rather generic BLACKPINK-coded track quickly, from the (straining) vocals to the stomping production to the wannabe anthemic aspects of it. The hook unfortunately feels more like a nursery rhyme or something, and it’s surprisingly low energy overall. It’s not bad or anything, just kinda is there among the other songs like it.
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TripleS – “Are You Alive”
I am a “la la la” defender, as I think it’s a pretty catchy signature gimmick, but the thing that made it work was it was mostly a secondary complimentary element to their songs and not the primary, which it becomes here. While that was a problem, the death knell for this is the low energy, a surprising choice from them of all groups.
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BOYNEXTDOOR – “I Feel Good”
I guess there’s energy to this at least, but it just feels like a generic boy group track due to not having compelling melodies. Put it this way, if this was released by a nugu, I don’t think anybody would pay much attention. Honestly, the faux-cypher type of thing they were doing at the beginning was more compelling.
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Yeesh.
