Le Sserafim – Made My Night

Round 3 of the Le Sserafim-Overwatch match

[Video]
[5.30]Callie Petch: Oh, I do not like the realisation that Overwatch is a decade old, now. I remember getting massively into the open beta and free weekends all Summer after graduating from university, thinking this was gonna be absolutely huge, the next big multimedia franchise… only to see it squander that potential in record time thanks to endless crappy business decisions, game balance cock-ups, going all-in on e-sports to the detriment of everything else, failing to provide enough regular new content, and refusing to do anything substantial with the characters they’d created. A hollowed-out shell of wasted potential even before they just straight-up deleted the original game from existence and replaced it with a significantly worse sequel nobody particularly liked. …I do not like how much of those sentences — both in detail and the overall general arc — map onto my decade post-uni, come to think of it.

Hmm? Oh, the song? It’s fine. I’m ashamedly easy when it comes to this kind of French touch-inflected dance-pop, and are Le Sserafim trying to make it 2014 again via science or magic with the cut-up horns on the chorus. Can’t wait to hear the full song when it’s finished!

Hang on, I’m getting word in my earpiece about something… “What do you mean, ‘that is finished?’
[6]

James M Errington: The way K-pop reinterprets bits of pop detritus often makes for good/interesting music, in this case we have one part cheesy late 90s Eurodance and one part ‘Disco Tits’ by Tove Lo, and yes it works well, but with only just over two minutes of music it never seems to get far beyond its ingredients before it’s done, leaving an overwhelming sense of “what, is that it?” – Please come back and finish this song.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Forget those squiggly air horns and “Made My Night’ is a jam: strangers eye each across a dance floor in search of the (im)perfect (erotic) beat.
[7]

Nortey Dowuona: it’s aight. the McDonough brothers have written better melodies and thrown down harder drums elsewhere.
[4]

David Allun Jones: I find it amusing how the writers of “Made My Night” are doing their best to try to mine some deep mystique from the conceit of two strangers suddenly finding mutual attraction on the club floor (“Our friction’s chemical”, “I’m flesh and you’re the bone”, “You know my future and past”) while the rest of the song has no interest in being anything more than cutesy Old Navy jingle background noise. Not even the ladies of Le Sserafim seem all that invested in the plot – their shrugged-off chorus chirp of “I feel better now!” hilariously carrying little indication that they’re actually feeling any different than before – though I guess they’re allowed grace in losing some nuance with this being one of their few all-English tracks. Those funky-lite “Mr. Saxobeat” squawks do nearly make sitting through the disconnect worth it, while Kim Chaewon’s pronunciation of “mirror” adds an extra half-point for being so darling. What any of this has to do with a first person shooter video game, though, I couldn’t say.
[5]

Iain Mew: We are at just the right point in time for nostalgia for Saxobeat via Orange Caramel. The squawking is on point, but both the rest of the song and the Overwatch video play it too seriously to draw out anything beyond recognition and directionless energy.
[4]

Ashton Arbus: A very adequate song elevated by the nice Romanian house drop on the chorus. Bonus points for reminding me of something I haven’t thought about in a decade. Removing some of those bonus points for being attached to Overwatch, an unambiguous force for evil.
[6]

Jel Bugle: Sounds like Ava Max! It’s a jolly song, and it doesn’t out stay its welcome, a bonafide pop song!
[7]

Charlotte Gaze: There’s an off-chance that LE SSERAFIM, part-time idols and part-time video game ambassadors, are secretly our prospective robot overlords who have weaponized their cuteness to render us vulnerable. The only solace we have is that it’s matched by their forgettability.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: “Made My Night” does not, in fact, exist. This is nothing more than a dream, a half-forgotten memory of a Future Nostalgia-era Dua Lipa song that was mistakenly filed in our song review queue. The Singles Jukebox regrets the error.
[4]