There is no you, there is only me…
[Video][Website]
[6.75]
Alfred Soto: The verses suggest a Korean-Chinese “Love is a Battlefield,” but the best filigree is the snatch of woodwind that sounds lifted from a Benny Goodman song or something.
[5]
Madeleine Lee: The individual parts are excellent, but they would be even better as two different songs. The speedy, Kara-ish chorus feels like it’s been shoehorned into what would otherwise be a solid midtempo power girl group song.
[6]
Cédric Le Merrer: Coming from the band who not so long ago did “I Don’t Need a Man” (one of my favorite pop songs of the past few years), the creepy voyeuristic imagery of the video was particularly off putting. Take away the pictures, though (or the lyrics which I’ve chosen not to look any translation for following this incident), and you still have great performers who elevate a boilerplate K-pop song above its condition with the same joyful interplay as on previous singles.
[8]
Micha Cavaseno: At first my recognition of what’s supposed to be a sax, but sounds more like the sounds of a clown car’s horn delivering plaintive cries after being driven into a wall (RIP Bozo & Clarabell, we barely knew ye), had me worried. Are Miss A really going to incorporate “the sax thing” into their DNA so readily? Would I have to wake up one morning to see a pic of the four girls “trying” to play baritone saxes, only to shut my laptop and climb back into bed from exhaustion? But the big revelation is the sudden transfers that form as stylistic shifts: the power-pop quality of the hook, and the dips into “Putting On The Ritz” style-syncopation of the pre-chorus, that trancey bridge. None of these sections are as stand-out as the meat and potatoes of “Only You,” but they all place a sense of restlessness beneath the song that can leave one impressed with Miss A’s eagerness to please, but a bit hesitant to describe it as ambition.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: It’s all about the chorus, which replaces the bluster of the verses with a rush of excitement, excited and nervous all at once. Plus, they lighten the mood a bit late in the song with self awareness, which is a nice breather.
[8]
Mo Kim: The chorus doubles the tempo, but the verses keep circling back around to that lazy half-time while the women of Miss A try to convince a guy who just won’t commit that they’re meant for each other. In real life, these you-belong-with-me conversations have a tendency to eat their own tail: small wonder that the saxophone has the tenor of a well-played practical joke.
[8]
Megan Harrington: Though my personal preference is always for the sophisti-pop payoff after the sax intro, the tension between that smoky, mature mood and the bright pop that follows suits a song that’s negotiating modes of romance (boring vs. heart-racing, friendship vs. sex) in post-adolescence (but not quite adulthood). At the end of the music video, all the girls wind up at a club or house party, red solo cups in their hands, winking and dancing. This seems the ideal state, the middle ground between brass and synths. They’re happy and the song’s subject is nowhere to be found.
[6]
Iain Mew: A line translates as “I don’t like banal love” and for the heroic emotional chorus it is like they’re leaving the banal behind them completely, the world rebuilt for dancing and magic. The rest of the song, glowering sax especially, is a series of odd staging decisions that never fit together, but they still have that shining moment of transcending everything.
[7]