Splitting the difference between J-Pop and K-Pop with no regard to their alphabetic contiguity…
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[4.71]
Iain Mew: The Korean pop industry’s attempts at tailored international expansion make for a fascinating tale over the years. Wonder Girls’ Nick Jr. movie: not a success. Chinese sub-group Exo-M: more of a success, at least while it lasted. More sophisticated approaches to Japan got us to the joint Produce 48 reality show and IZ*ONE, a success in both countries, but very much a Korean-led one. NiziU are also the product of a Korean-Japanese reality show, but the Korean part is kept more behind the scenes, and they’ve been a much bigger success in Japan. I find it hard not to second guess who came up with which sounds and why, and the pounding positivity gets a bit much and flattens out the whole song, as enjoyable as some of the other more dextrous moves are. I’m not the specific audience, though, and it’s met its goals there.
[4]
Rachel Saywitz: This is the type of sugar-coated, cotton-candy flavored pop song where the candy is actually a few years old but you decide to eat it anyway because you’re adventurous and you have nothing else in the pantry, and when you bite into a stale, crusty piece, you can immediately tell this is not what candy should taste like, and with that thought in mind you bite into another grainy piece of candy because it still has some sweetness, and you could use any kind of sweetness right now given the state of your personal life. Anyway, this song is okay.
[5]
Aaron Bergstrom: Repeated listens bring on a sensation similar to highway hypnosis, but instead of unconsciously driving home, you come to at your desk and realize you’ve sketched out plot arcs for two seasons of a partially-animated TV show for tweens that will use “Step and a Step” as its theme song. You have no memory of doing this.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Evokes teenpop at its dorkiest and EDM at its Zeddiest, and sounds stunningly dated — but I can’t imagine any year where it wouldn’t.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: At a time when so many K-Pop artists are pushing the boundaries of the genre, NiziU’s latest single feels regressive, like we’re gonna party like it’s 2016. This is perfectly fine pop music, but it’s also basic as hell.
[5]
Anna Katrina Lockwood: NiziU is a JYPE girl group making their official debut — a genre of single that comes with a stunningly high bar, which “Step and a Step” just does not reach. It is a huge disappointment, especially on the heels of their excellent, zippy, maniacally arranged pre-debut single, “Make You Happy”. “Step and a Step” is, conversely, a merely serviceable girl group song. It’s twinkly, and cute, and it’s got hooks — it’s just that they’re not tremendously compelling. The members bring a significant amount of charm to the material of course, but nonetheless, this sounds like a song that was intended for Twice, then cast off and retrofitted for their younger Japanese counterparts here.
[5]
Ryo Miyauchi: While the tastelessness of the generic tropical-house beat fails to elevate “Step and a Step” above a feelgood jingle, the lyrics show JYP following a textbook example of Japanese idol-song lyrics: “just believe in yourself” and “everything will be OK” are natural platitudes, eschewing cleverness in favor of earnest sincerity. Considering that “Step and a Step” is a J-pop single engineered by a K-pop company, it’s intriguing to see which aesthetic choices producers abroad deem characteristic of the market. JYP’s own envisioning focuses particularly on message over style, perhaps hinting that sentimentality works better than stylishness in J-pop. I don’t think they’re out of hand to suggest that, and seeing the success of NiziU last year, they haven’t been entirely wrong.
[5]