The house that Derulo built…
[Video][Website]
[5.09]
Sonya Nicholson: Hello Venus’s dance cover of Jason Derulo’s “Wiggle Wiggle” (at 2.85 million YouTube views and counting) remains offensive in a 5-booty-shots-to-1-wide-angle-shot kind of way, though whether it’s more exploitative than K-pop’s other favored ways of shooting women — the close-up adoring lip-biting look or the “oops I didn’t realize I was being sexualized” up-skirt photography look — is debatable. In any case, all three low-budget video treatments for Hello Venus’s original song “Wiggle Wiggle” do make a point of showing off the faces as well as the bodies of the group. And sometimes that’s all it takes to move something out of I-pity-their-careers land and into the territory of fun club kitsch. “Wiggle Wiggle” also has some interesting production touches not seen in other Brave Brothers songs of similar aesthetic provenance — I’m pro- pre-chorus wail, myself — and some just-this-side-of-sexy dance moves. All of which is to say that after originally being down on this song I’ve come around to regarding it fondly.
[6]
Madeleine Lee: There’s not much use for further hand-wringing over Hello Venus’s shift, post-lineup change, from secretly sexy concept (everyone knows what “do you want to come in for tea” means) to blatantly sexy concept. Nothing was wrong with “Sticky Sticky,” except that it was boring and too obviously trying to replicate the success AOA had with their own (better) concept-switching Brave Brothers song. “Wiggle Wiggle” is also obviously trying to replicate a fluke hit, and it does so efficiently, but it has one original thing going for it: those four bars where everything stops except for the drums, and new member Seoyoung releases a piercing, demon-summoning keen. It’s even more arresting live. I’m not going to pretend it’s objectively good, but it’s the first time I’ve heard a voice-and-drums combo like this in a K-pop song — or at least such an aggressive one — and I keep wanting to hear it again. Maybe not 2.8 million times, but at least… 5?
[5]
Jessica Doyle: A year ago at this time we were getting the pre-release publicity for the supposed showdown between SNSD and 2NE1. Since then the former has lost Jessica and the latter’s future is uncertain, between CL’s pending American debut and Park Bom’s belated drug-smuggling scandal. And so the girl-group side of K-pop is in greater than usual flux: SM, Woollim, WM, YG, and Cube all just debuted new groups or are about to; APink has its sweet niche well defined, but the rest of the market is open. (Hell, even Crayon Pop is working with Shinsadong Tiger; the result will be either disappointingly bland or astonishing.) By the end of 2014 a group like EXID could get its (underrated) “Up and Down” back onto the charts, well after the original promotion cycle, thanks to a fancam. I hadn’t thought of any of this in connection with “Wiggle Wiggle” until Timothy Moore of Critical K-pop declared it “post-Kpopalyptic”: a series of videos explicitly meant to do an end-run around the usual approaches and go for viral. Fortunately, Hello Venus’s management figured out what Stellar‘s didn’t: that the Look!Sexy! videos go down much easier with a side of goofy. I don’t think Hello Venus has enough to break out here — it should’ve been shorter, and with many, many fewer background exclamations — but I’m charmed enough to want to wiggle my butt with some underdogs. One extra point because it’s 씰룩 씰룩 (ssilluk ssilluk), not “sexy love.”
[6]
Iain Mew: I like how it flaunts its origins as thrown together response pop. It’s as much fill-powered as thrill-powered, but even so it brings a pleasing looseness that doesn’t often go with similar K-Pop productions. “Wiggle” having led to this and left its traces gets me thinking more fondly of Jason Derulo, which was previously only the case for the video to “Trumpets”.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: Oh hey, speaking of finger snaps! “Wiggle Wiggle” has a kinetic bass and a wobbling, metallic synth figure: an arrangement that sounds less sparse and more restrained when subject to the trademark K-pop girl-group vocal-harmony assault. It’s still enough of a throwback that I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a Missy Elliott guest spot emerge two-thirds of the way through.
[7]
John Seroff: K-pop girl group Hello Venus (now on its “5th Digital Single” according to the attached gilded metadata) steers the analytically spot-on retro ’90s R&B “Wiggle Wiggle” to respectability. The fairly generic vocals and ho-hum rap break are aided by vintage boom/clap/click drum tracks and a caffeinated Timbaland-esque chirrup. Probably destined to be forgotten by year’s end but first snowflakes still look pretty while they’re fresh in the air.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: I’m tripped up by how B-List this production is (congratulations Korea, your industry is so thriving, you have your own Scott Storch/JR Rotem types), and how the song seems to drift lazily into too vast an initial chorus. Nothing offensive here, but nothing all worth jumping up for.
[3]
Sonia Yang: Eye-rollingly bland club pop, with a poor attempt at jumping the “bootylicious” bandwagon. Even LMFAO’s “wiggle wiggle” is much sexier, in a way.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: Is a booty anthem really such a novelty in Korean pop that they didn’t bother to do anything else to it, trusting that the one hook would be enough? Lil Jon wept.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: It’s always nice to see different countries sharing certain customs… such as songs about butts and clubs transformed into last-night-on-Earth affairs. Beyond that, though, “Wiggle Wiggle” is simply serviceable — it probably charms during an evening out, but doesn’t make much of an impression outside of that.
[5]
Mo Kim: I have to be careful when talking about female objectification and sexuality because my experience is bound to differ from those of actual women. At the same time, I feel that the song and video (rated 19, of course, because there’s absolutely no way horny Korean men could handle all this ass in one video) play into the male gaze on several levels — the announcer declaring “action” is male; the camera lingers on bodies over faces, rendering these women essentially interchangeable; and the women promise in the chorus to give the audience a “great present tonight,” a line that I’m still mulling over the implications of. This reading, though, is complicated by several things. First, there’s Seohyun piercing the icy instrumentation at the end of the chorus, screeching in her best horror-movie voice to shake that butt (raising the question: whose butt?) left and right. It’s a sudden reversal of power, the gaze of a voyeuristic public reflected back as a demand. Group rapper Lime pushes back even more, dropping a verse where she catches you looking at her apple hiiiiip and asks you not to drool before she declares herself queen of the stage. By the end, the girls reach equilibrium: I like it like it; you like it like it; love’s a mirror that goes both ways. On top of all this, there’s the diverse crowd of screaming fans at live performances like this, adult men and young teenage girls all captivated. How do they see this? Why are they cheering?
[5]