That’s a real popular song! Who wants to hear of it fifty times more?
[Video][Website]
[5.83]
Alfred Soto: With this title and concept, all you need is a hook you won’t stumble over; Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine, after all, triumphed with both exactly thirty years ago. Seungri gives it a hopped-up treatment that One Direction at their addled best in 2014 would’ve owned. Hot, damn.
[6]
Ryo Miyauchi: It’s usually about being attracted or attractive with these heartthrob boy-band numbers, but Seungri builds a song where both informs the tricky dance. The latter’s reserved as the final punchline in favor of the former to pick his pride back up. Yet the extensive details before the hook about how stunning and untouchable his crush is shade the seemingly confident “you’ll fall in love with me” into a wish as much as a promise. Heartthrobs turn powerless from attraction too, though what’s enviable is that they can somehow flip that vulnerability into something cool.
[6]
Tim de Reuse: His performance has some unfortunate Billie Joe Armstrong-ish qualities that don’t really gel with their upbeat surroundings, and the bridge isn’t nearly as dramatic a build as it wants to be. The chorus, at least, is a perfectly functional four chord chant-along.
[5]
Will Rivitz: The only time a guitarist and keyboardist are featured in this video, the guitars and keys of the song cut out. Being the consummate showmen they are, the players don’t let that detail stop them. Much like their, er, “unplugged” playing, “1, 2, 3!” is cute and wholly inessential.
[5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: This isn’t the best pop rock song based around a counting hook and a weirdly compelling guitar riff that’s come out over the past few years, but it manages to land on the “endearing” side of dumb, and that’s victory enough.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: Seungri was honestly one of the members of Big Bang that I’ve always found a bit in danger of dying with the ship; not that he was any less talented but that YG clearly favored G-D, Taeyang and TOP as soloists to go beyond the group, and so he’d always been granted rather marginal roles as the emphases shifted where they would. “1, 2, 3!” delightfully betrays my expectations, however, by Seungri doing something radical in the YG realm: don’t be cool. In a group where the inherent desire is hipness, edge and blinding impression, Seungri has basically followed the lessons of World’s Greatest G-D Impersonator Zico and embraced being a schmaltzy cornball in order to feel more distinct. The Archie Comics (not no Riverdale, folks) Bruno Mars power-pop vibes do him wonders, rustling with a performance that doesn’t overwhelm as much as it labors to propel. “1, 2, 3!” relies treadmill-like on Seungri to make the record work via deceptive simplicity, and he does absolutely great at making this peppy number not go too deeply into the cheese. Not a record I imagine bumping routinely, but certainly a record I never would’ve expected out of him.
[7]