We are now unable to go two days without a selection from Korea…
[Video][Website]
[5.43]
Iain Mew: As of the time of writing, Big Bang hold all five of the top five positions on the Korean singles chart. This is not something anyone else has come close to achieving in the past year or so that I’ve been watching the chart, so they must be doing something right. This song has a soft brushed production that ensures sporadic prettiness, but between the gradually sapping sappiness and the ineffectual slow rapping, “Blue” gets to seem an unfortunately appropriate name.
[4]
Sabina Tang: The boys hold back, go for breathy and tender; Seungri floats like a butterfly, and TOP grounds it, though I don’t hear the desolation the lyrics purport to contain. The arrangement does likewise, landing closer to Saint Etienne than David Guetta on the 4-4 dance pop continuum. Like early spring sunlight, it’s slight but easy to welcome into one’s life.
[8]
Frank Kogan: This is a song alright, but it seems to want to present itself as an interlude: voices intone softly, while sonar devices detect submerged doors creaking half-audibly in the background. This track is better for not swelling or going for a payoff. It doesn’t quite seep through in the way it wants to, however. Perhaps it should be longer, and softer. (Oh fuck, what am I saying? Just put it on repeat, and go lie down. [Raises score a point.])
[6]
Brad Shoup: I know the group was called Savage Garden, but I’m not sure how much there’s left to till.
[3]
John Seroff: The variety of vocal approaches from the boys in “Blue” provide some pleasant thematic variation on what’s otherwise a restrained offering. Each of them sheds a different colored light on the scant, chirping melody; I imagine that I’d find a lot more to like here if I were familiar enough with the band to know which one I was meant to be rooting for.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: I like the differentiation in their voices — and now I’m wondering why more boy bands don’t go for texture over creaminess — and the video’s immensely watchable, even if it is just “pretty boys mope moodily around urban landscape.” The song, unfortunately, has nothing beyond its exquisite presentation of their voices-slash-faces going for it. Thing is, that presentation’s so strong I’m almost tempted to care anyway.
[6]
Jer Fairall: The acoustic strums, the squiggly little electronic refrain and the fluttery way that the one singer delivers the line “‘I’m singing my bluuuuuuuees” all grasp at a sense of fragility that the slickness of the whole package eventually overwhelms, leaving this stranded somewhere between a ballad that feels woefully overinflated and a big pop production that feels perversely listless. Their voices aren’t at all unpleasant, though.
[5]