No. No I do not…
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[4.00]
Patrick St. Michel: What made the sudden Korean-pop boom in Japan back in 2010 so exciting wasn’t that it was a new development — plenty of Korean artists, from Tohoshinki to BoA, established themselves in the Japanese market long before KARA or Girls’ Generation appeared. But the latter did it their way. Dive into any J-pop-centric comments section from that summer (or, for your sanity, don’t) and you’ll find a lot of people complaining about how the latter two groups didn’t get popular in Japan “the right way” — they just brought over existing singles and translated them into Japanese. Sure, but when your catalog includes some of the best pop songs of the past decade, why not? Girls’ Generation eventually started making Japanese songs, but even those were miles above the J-pop they competed against for the top spot on music charts (something rivals KARA weren’t as consistent about). “Divine,” a ballad tacked onto a greatest hits collection, is the sound of settling for all the worst tendencies of Japanese pop music. It’d be a filler track on a Namie Amuro or Nishino Kana full-length, the sort of single that K-pop in 2010 absolutely leveled as it gained traction in Japan. Its only redeeming quality is that it’s clearly a throwaway addition to juice sales — the song itself is the worst of the Japanese market being embraced by an oftentimes daring group.
[1]
Iain Mew: We tend to focus on Girls’ Generation’s Korean career, but their Japanese one is pretty extensive, having taken in some great alternative approaches as it has diverged. This is not one of them. It’s a damp ballad performed ably enough, but it needs the additional context granted to “we are always one” to gain any spark at all.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: This ballad-by-numbers is so rushed and slapdash they didn’t even bother to adjust the Auto-Tune on the vocals, which makes everything here sound like water sliding down a sink-drain. Can something be mediocre if you know nobody really gave a damn about it?
[2]
Alfred Soto: Without quantifying it note for note, the chorus evokes the slush of eighties Bacharach-Sager. I prefer the tougher verses, not to mention the pained “We are always one!” like a host in a Jean Renoir film switching from French to English.
[5]
Brad Shoup: Density without lushness, measured pace without stateliness: a ballad like this relies on nothing but will. This kind of soggy sorrow has a weird resonance with me; there are a thousand tunes like it in my optometrist’s office of the mind.
[6]
David Sheffieck: Thematically there’s nothing new here, but GG tap into just enough pathos to keep things from curdling; like the best mid-period Michael Jackson ballads, this walks a tightrope and keeps itself aloft by sheer technique.
[6]