Today! It’s an Asian pop showdown. A K-pop, a J-pop and a C-pop. And the Koreans throw down the gauntlet….
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Iain Mew: Starting from the sirens, siren-like synths and barking dog (which may represent sincerity, if the subs I’m looking at are to be believed), “What’s Your Name?” is like 4Minute staging a love life intervention in the form of an interrogation. They do so armed with an array of production tricks and the vocal cool and toughness needed to back up the idea; I definitely wouldn’t want to be the one resisting.
[8]
Patrick St. Michel: Thought 4Minute were just going to dig into Hyuna’s leftover “Ice Cream,” but turns out they just needed it to build a tasty dessert. The production pops and burbles, like Brave Brothers envisioned a field of 8-bit bubbles for the group to poke while writing this. It can get a little too busy at times, but overall is a nice comedown from the tough-to-top “Volume Up.”
[8]
Brad Shoup: I’m not sure what the going rate is for a gorgeous 8-bit arc and an existentially pretty chorus that just keeps pushing upward. They just had to’ve left more cohesive parts on the desktop, I’m sure of it. Ecstasy is sacrificed to constrast.
[6]
Sonya Nicholson: Disjointed and lightweight, but also summery and fun, with a breezy vibe that works better as the weather gets warmer. Why is it that the two currently-promoted Kpop songs I like most right now (T-ara N4 “Countryside Life” is the other one) are exactly the two with the thinnest vocals? MYSTERY. And speaking of mysteries: This is the #1 song on Melon and has been for three weeks, which is a long time for an idol group song. But it’s #1 *only* on Melon, and not on any of South Korea’s competing music charts, fueling speculation that producer Brave Brothers is (once again) buying his way to the top. But no matter. Dude writes probably a hundred songs a year; I’m pretty sure he only backs the ones he believes in.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Bubblelicious technology and bootylicious vocals are an insoluble combination, but when the track decelerates for a guitar-anchored bridge it braced me for a chain reaction it never hit. My favorite K-pop moment of the year though.
[6]
Daisy Le Merrer: Someday, Google or Facebook will invent a new prosthetic ear dedicated to telling me cool stuff about all the brands I like, while my real ears are bored by IRL conversations. And according to Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote, it will feel just as awesome as listening to all these blips & hooks.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: What the Pet Shop Boys single was for Moroder-adjacent disco, this is for radio-adjacent pop. It’s all in there: paramilitary drums, acid-bubble synths, Game Boy bloops, the piano in Disclosure’s house, handclaps, a guitar bit that reflects as much as it can amid the chaos. Songs like these defy any description other than just listing their component audio tracks; good songs like this make internal sense anyway. This does.
[7]
Sabina Tang: Conceptually a throwback to 4Minute’s early, pink-flaunting teen-brat incarnation, before the hard edges (visual and sonic) took hold — not to mention Hyuna’s sex-kitten apotheosis of ’11-’12. It’s got that drunken 8-bit electric slide, though, and snares in the right places, so I forgive it for not being a leap forward.
[7]
Edward Okulicz: It’s all about the moment in the pre-chorus and in the outro where it sounds like a tape’s been dropped in water and played back. No, dropped in alcohol. It’d sound amateurish in isolation but everything in this is so expert, it wouldn’t shock me if Brave Brothers tried every melody and every preset to work out what made the girls sound the most tantalisingly taunting.
[8]