Introduction...
When I first hear about songs, I generally seek outside opinion before listening to them (Case in point: Orange Caramel - Catallena. Outside source: The Fany Pack / Anti Kpop-Fangirl). If the general consensus, regardless of Kpop-fan or non-Kpop-fan, is "I love it!" I'll be happy to go watch/listen to the song. If the general consensus, again not Kpop-biased, is "This is horrible," that sparks my curiosity even more.
However, I made the egregious mistake of choosing to read the YouTube comments of the video first. "Why is this a mistake?" one might ask. It's a mistake because what I found, besides the usual "OPPAR SARANGHAE!" and fanwars, I saw these things:
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| Tsk tsk. Hygiene is important, boys. |
My natural reaction was to gag. WTF is this.
However, I decided to soldier on. Perusing the other comments, the way the fangirls described their oppars made me think of
James Thomson's venerable poems, particularly this quote:
"...Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous..."
Of course, this applies to quite well to most K-pop groups' songs, where there are too many people to count, and where the fans harp on and on about the amazing-ness of the songs...but the song itself was quite the cacophony, almost like the Furies of Tartarus themselves had descended on my poor ears.
...and Rondo...
All in all, the song was annoying (to me, at least). The part that goes "Wae nae mameul heundeuneun geonde" over and over again sounded strangely familiar, until I realized that it reminded me of some Bollywood movie songs from my childhood experiences.
The dance, seemed to be particularly similar to EXO's Growl, a song which could be classified
There were some parts that made me do a double take and become a raging feminist:
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| It's called personal space, bitch. |
I, for one, would not like to get dragged around / slammed against lockers / get my hair pulled (and I'd give props to the girl in the MV for fighting back). Of course, K-pop logic is different from real-world logic, but I'd like to think I'm saner that 100% of fangirls, who are willing to be mistreated by their oppars because "Oppar is sexy". One commenter put it quite nicely (for a minute I thought it was AKF who wrote that):
@moiatashi: While you're at it, they should be teaching children to wash their hands on national TV. Hygiene is very important.
Here's yet another sane commenter pointing out the blatantly misogynist parts of the MV:
...Capriccioso!
One would like to think that this MV was a ground-breaking, stereotype-smashing piece of gold with the role-model-ness of John Lennon's "Imagine". Unfortunately not.
The storyline was *very* stereotypical. Bad boy falls in love with girl, chases girl, gets girl, blah blah blah. *Very* innovative indeed.
Thankfully, there was a set storyline, quite unlike SNSD's Mr. Mr., or any EXO video (except for the drama versions >.<)
TL; DR:
A 4/10 for the song itself because of the Bollywood memories. Without that it would be a 2/10.
A 2/10 for the MV because of the lack of originality + the girl getting tossed around like a rag doll never mind the fact that I would like my real life crush to slam me up against a locker and kiss me but you all don't want to hear that so I'll stop now.
A 5/10 for the dance because they were okay. Not spectacular. Just OK.
Until next time,
Chaeshire Jessicat.
