May 19, 2013
Girls Generation welcomes summer with the release of their Japanese single 'Love & Girls'. Do check out the PV below!
Love & Girls has a strongly reminiscent 'I Got A Boy' feel, but with a much more girly tinge to it. It is a fun upbeat song that brings out the bubble pop image in Girls Generation. For this music video, they step out to the brightly-colored outdoors along with large masses of crowds who dance along too (if you look carefully you will notice that the crowd consists nearly all girls except for a few unique guy individuals who cross dress). And I unknowingly began to draw parallels between this PV to 'Like This' by Wonder Girls. They both have a very light, bouncy, refreshing flash mob dance style, though I do prefer the latter.
The song is kind of lacking in substance. Thin vocals + lack of vocal variation especially towards the end of the song = not impressive + forgettable, even the voices of the better vocalists couldn't really shine through. Fortunately, the accentuation of the song by regular whistling and ooh-oohs helped to draw attention away from the vocal void. The catchphrase "na na na na na, na na na love and girls" created a strong focal point for the song too, not to mention that it's been stuck in my head for the past 30 minutes.
The greatest plus point of this song would be the addictive dance moves, before they start getting slightly repetitive. The dance moves are well choreographed - cutesy, somewhat retro, relatively easy for fans to dance along to and extremely complementary to the summer mood. This reminds me of a post on Seoulbeats about 'Music for the Eyes', and at times like these, I couldn't agree more. But to give them some credit, the party atmosphere was really infectious and I couldn't watch the PV without the urge to get to my feet. So this song seems not one so much as to showcase the talents of the members but more of a fun, catchy and relate-able dance track. Hence I wouldn't go as to compare this song to their past Japanese releases, like Paparazzi and Flower Power.
Did you enjoy Love & Girls? Tell us your comments below!
I agree with basically everything that was said here. The only thing I want to add is that I hate how stylist always manages to dress Seohyun so... awkwardly. It's like a mixture of trying to mature her but trying to keep a cute feel which always just turns it into a disaster.
ReplyDeleteAlso, is it weird that I was reminded kind of of the SNSD & 2PM promotional song 'Cabi' and LMFAO - 'Party Rock Anthem'
Well obviously. Opinions and such.
ReplyDeleteI didn't write this post, but from what I see, I think what most SONEs are basically reverting to when someone even mentions 'Wonder Girls - Like This' after viewing the new PV release is 'SNSD - Hahaha' so that there isn't a whole comparison within the groups and people don't say 'Hey, the idea was stolen'. Primarily, I think the idea is basically universal and it's not something that can be stolen anyway, so what I find kind of stupid is when people sort of just say 'this is like Wonder Girls - Like This' when I bet there were videos even outside of K-Pop that did flash mobs and things of that sort.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I watched Like This and I watched Hahaha and when comparing both and seeing which is more like 'Love & Girls' I would most definitely say Like This by a long shot. Sure, SNSD did a flash mob kind of thing in Hahaha, but I think the feel when looking at the 3 are noticeably different. Like This and Love & Girls looked arguably more fun, entertaining and like the girls actually enjoyed it than the feeling of Hahaha which, in my opinion, looked kind of boring and forced in which the girls didn't enjoy it. (Correct me if I'm wrong but this was a promotional video for a CF?). Like This and Love & Girls had the same feel (happiness, joy, not-giving-a-fuck-about-the-world) which is why so many people, including the writer of this post who is Kaiii!, immediately think back to 'Like This' once viewing this video and not to 'Hahaha'.
Also, you can read above that the comparison to 'I Got a Boy' was also mentioned.
These are my exact sentiments! I also do think it's great that GG is venturing into a wide repertoire of songs. It shows their maturity as an idol group and appeals to a wider range of listeners. (:
ReplyDeleteHi! I am the writer of this post. Thanks for reading the review and for your comment, and I would like to add on to what Tiffany has mentioned in her reply.
ReplyDeleteActually, what I was meant to say was that in watching this video, Wonder Girls Like This just came to my mind. It kind of just struck me like bam. It is rare that a KPOP MV feature such great masses of crowds, so I drew upon my one and only past memory of watching such a kpop mv, and that memory happened to be Wonder Girls Like This. It is really not an 'oh time to compare girls generation with other girl groups oh look there's wonder girls time to compare yay' kind of affair.
And at that point in writing the review, Hahaha honestly did not cross my mind, and so I didn't make reference to it in my review. But now looking back, I wouldn't have compared it to Hahaha either. Hahaha just has a completely different setting than Love & Girls, as Tiffany has mentioned.
I really do appreciate both the music styles of Wonder Girls and Girls Generation and acknowledge that they are different. Honestly, I am a huge fan of Taeyeon of GG. But I just wanted to give a complete review of Love & Girls, and no doubt did Wonder Girls cross my mind more than once every 10 seconds when I first watched the video. (:
I enjoyed this song. it has a fun summer type melody that's both memorable and infectious. It's been rattling around in my head since I first heard it a few days ago. Not every song has to have "meaning". The video, which includes drag queens in the background, is also a fun and unexpected surprise.
ReplyDeletessa
ReplyDeleteI don't really see how this is similar to I Got a Boy at all.
ReplyDeleteAn opinion that is borderline wrong, but sure..
ReplyDeleteWhy compare the video to the Wonder Girls? Why not compare it to Hahaha song?
ReplyDelete