Nu'Est Face Review

I know this song isn't new anymore but it's still one of my favorites and I finally decided that, as there are no new songs that I'm dying to write about, now is my chance to finally air my take on Face! Ok, first, I don't own anything having to do with Nu'Est or face.  Thanks.

Only slightly off topic for just a second, I recently left a job where I worked under the worst boss in the world.  He was such a bully.  He delighted in making me feel like poo.  Nothing was ever good enough and he was so bored that he didn't mind spending 20 minutes at a time telling me how worthless and stupid he thought I was.  When he finally sent me to sweep or mop, I plugged into my ipod, and this song always make me feel just a little bit better.  Ok, a lot a bit better.  So, a personal thank you to Nu'Est.

Rather than my usual review, I'm going into a little more detail about the video because I've watched this one so much.

Anyone else notice the fog in the school?  In the very beginning?  Their school has a serious insulation problem.  Or, that's right outside the guy's locker room and it's a cloud of stink! (No offence guys)  I just don't remember my school ever having clouds or fog in it.

You know that scene where bully victim looks into his locker and some one has trashed it?  And he looks all sad.

I'm afraid I can't related at all.  My locker always looked like that, and no one ever trashed it save me!  It took me a while to realize that his locker had been vandalized instead of it just being business as usual in a school locker.  

Oooh, and the entrance of Ren!  *Squeals*  The first time I saw this video, I thought, "Wow.  A guy band with a girl in it.  That's new!"  But then he started singing and I had to pause, and rewind and listen to it again and then listen to the rest of the song just to make sure that Ren was actually a guy.  Wow.  And you know what I like about Ren so much?

It's because most 'pretty' kpop idols play up their feminine image by being really cutesie, aegyo.  Like all pretty girls are so stereotypically 'cheerleader on redbull' all the time.  But not Ren!  Ren is pretty, and enters like a boss!  He's badass through the whole video, never falling into the trap others seem to.  Way to represent the 90% of pretty girls who don't rely on kitten soft cuteness in their everyday lives!  Love you Ren!

Ok, fangirl side has been exercised.  Back to the music video!  Great energetic dancing!  Love it all.  Save for Before the Dawn by Infinite, this is the most violent fist fight I've ever seen in a kpop music video.  There's just all kinds of new stuff being introduced by this band!  So brave for a debut.  I have only one real complaint...

WHY?!?!? 

I hate gloves!  Ok, I don't have gloves, but I hate the ugly, excessive gloves that kpop-ers wear!  *Disgusted sigh*  Join the ranks dude.  

   

And I know there are many, many more that I couldn't find pictures of.

Please stop!  No more!  

I've read a few different plot theories, and everyone is just as confused as I am.  Why are they beating the boy up and then befriending him later?  Why are they hitting eachother?  I mean, the song is about rising above the petty cruelty of another, but if that's what they were trying to do in the video, there were probably less confusing ways.  

Ok, I'm sure I have more to say, but I can't remember it right this minute, so I'm going to sign off here.  Yay Nu'Est!  Yay Face!

Infinite's Man in Love Review

Disclaimer:  I don't own Infinite, ok?  Why are you rubbing it in??  I don't own their songs or their music or anything having to do with the music video I'm reviewing.  No suing me please!

Meh. I'm not in love with the song.  Cutsie, "I'm so in love," its a beautiful world songs don't tend to do much for me.  They tend to have less of a beat.  And this may be a bit of a tangent, but cutsie aegyo boy music videos and most girls' videos are more about 'look at me' than 'listen to me.'  I listen to music because it makes me happy.  I watch their music videos to listen to the music, not to watch hot people flaunting themselves in front of the camera in a bid to have looks outshine the voices.  Ok, rant over, back to Infinite!

I've been a fan since Before the Dawn, even though it was a creepy stalker song.  This song is much less creepy.  It says things that are totally relate-able.  They're saying that they care more about how they look and are giggling all the time because they're in love.  It's saying that he wants to do stuff for her and sees her everywhere.  Cute stuff.

Because this is a aegyo video, I was thrilled that it had a coherent dance!  I have no complaints about it.  However, the costumes are... not so good.  I actually thought they detracted a bit.  It's hard to pay attention to what they're doing when those horrible vertically striped pants are blocking everything else out.

Just right of the center.

And the checkered shirt!  Wow, why?  Just why??

Those are the worst two items of clothing, in my opinion.  But, honestly, I wouldn't want my boyfriend to wear any of their clothes.  And that's just the black and whites!  Shall we touch on the colorful, tear-inducingly  bright ones? Yes!  Let's.  

Ok, this one's not so bad, but who wears their sweaters like that anymore?  Ever since Hollywood started dressing their snobby rich guys like this, it has become unfashionable for men to drape their sweaters around their shoulders.  

Pink pants!  I've only seen boys in kpop videos wear pink pants.  I wish they'd notice that the fashion is not catching on.  And that there's a reason that it hasn't caught on.  It's not attractive.  I could go on, of course, but I like Infinite, and I respect that they may not have complete control over their costumes, so we're going to move on.

Ok, my main peeve about this video is the kitten.

Don't get me wrong.  It's adorable.  But I would be so angry is someone got me a kitten.  A pet is a huge responsibility!  If I wanted a cat, I'd get one for myself!  What if I don't have a cat because I'm allergic?  What if I don't have the money to buy the cat litter and the food, or my place is so tiny that it would be cruel to keep a pet in it? What if he hadn't liked cats? What if he were more of a dog person?  Or maybe he already had a cat or a dog?  A new pet could stress your existing pet or get eaten by the dog.  Of all the things that a person can give as a present to someone they like, an animal is one of the worst, in my humble opinion.  I'm really hoping that people don't see this video and decide that its a good idea.  There might be a sudden influx of baby animals to shelters and pounds.  Don't do it!!

Ok, so...all together, this video gets a 4 out of 10.  Eh music, cute words, cute guys, bad clothes, good dance, eh plot.  

Heo Young Saeng's The Art of Seduction Review

Disclaimer:  I do not own Heo Young Saeng, his music, his videos, or anything else having to do with this song, this singer or this industry.  Please no suing!

I've also seen this song called "How to Get Girls."  Having watched the music video, I thought, 'Wow, that's kinda creepy.'  And then I looked up the lyrics and thought, 'Huh, that's really repetitive and Extremely creepy!'  The first lines of the song (besides 'This is the time, the time, this is the time, the time) is "I'll sell my soul to the moonlight, and I'll trap you alone in my crimson heart."  A few things hit me about this, first is that it could be really sweet, depending on what words follow and what images the singer is going to present us with.  The next thing was a faintly nostalgic connection to LeAnn Rimes' Can't Fight the Moonlight, for possibly tenuous reasons.  And lastly, HOLY CRAP, STALKER!

The song gets worse with lines like 'If you reject me, I'll hit on you and hit on you again.  I don't give up.' and ' it's all your fault for being so pretty,' and 'that's the problem. Being pretty is the problem,' (anyone else remembering those movies where a psycho takes a knife to their obsession's face to make them ugly so that no one else will want them?  Just me?)  I'll concede that maybe, just maybe, if you're in a really healthy relationship, or in the clutches of typhoon of teenage hormones, this song might seem sweet if you sing it to your significant other.  But no one else could get away with it and would be, in face, inviting a restraining order.

Um, did anyone else think that the acting was... well, bad?  It was a bit over the top, in my humble opinion.  He was trying much, much too hard to look cute.  Fail.  It did occur to me that this might have been on purpose; the product of the girl's distorted mind, which can't distinguish 'cute' from 'creepy,' kinda like not being able to distinguish a baby doll from Chucky. Maybe his bad acting was on purpose.  But then I thought, nah! This guy is one of the singers from SS501.  Bad acting seems to run in the group.  (Oh! Ow! Burn!  [Please don't hate me])  The reason I couldn't make myself believe that the over-acting was intentional was the scene at about 2:20, where he looks like he's trying to hide how scared he is.  It was much more obvious than the being overly cute.  Yep, subtlety is not a strong point of Heo Young Saeng's acting.  The fear though, that was good.  He acts fear well.

As for the dance... um, I'm going to have to assume that this guy was chosen for his singing ability, not his dancing.   Now, I'm uncoordinated.  When I try to do kpop dances, I've been asked if I'm alright.  But this dance, I think I could do.  And do just as well.  A lot of arm waving.

There wasn't very much english in the song.  "Crazy baby" a couple times.  Meh.  Not a lot to sing a long to. The song is semi-entertaining but won't be making my play list.

Minor notes, where did they get the shiny rope?  That looks pretty cool.  And anyone else get a little de ja vu of Kan Mi Youn's Going Crazy?

But this is not the first, nor the last time that kpop will share plots!  And if that girl wasn't so nuts, I'd love to hire her to paint my room!  Having murals on my walls of my fav kpop idols would be amazing!!

U-Kiss Standing Still Review

Disclaimer:  I do not own U-kiss or their music or their video.  I'm just a fan writing about Standing Still and am not making any money off it.  Don't sue me!

K, about the song first!  It's a bit slower than the songs I usually go crazy over, but there's so much English in it that it's easier to listen to over and over because it's so entertaining.  Being able to sing along is one of the things I miss most about English music when I miss it at all.  U-Kiss was very kind to throw in so many English words.  It feels like I can interact with it, sing along for the most part.    

I'm skipping ahead to the dance now because I think the dance is one of the big reasons I really like the song.  There's so much energy in the shoulder-bump shuffle (see 1:02) and it's easy enough that I can try to do it while singing the English words (badly, alone, with window blinds drawn of course).  My favourite bit though, is from 0:48 seconds to 0:55 seconds.  That's when all the gratuitous body rubbing and patting is going on.  Now, I don't like it for the reason you're probably thinking I do (well, ok, that too) but because if you watch it again, it looks like they're trying to be really cool while putting out their burning shirts.  "Rub off the fire, rub off the fire!  Not working, try patting it!"  But because they are U-Kiss and filming a music video, they' 'I'm on film, can't look like I'm panicking, play it cool, play it cool!'  A much sexier version of this guy:

Think that's what they were going for?  Because that's all I can see.  It's the 'Sexily Putting Out the Fire' move.  

The only thing about the dancing that I was, 'eh' about, was all the reaching and lip rubbing that DongHo was doing.  It seemed excessive to me.  That's not his fault though.  That's the video editor's bad.  His image might be the 'hot, sexy' one, but give him SOME dimension, will you?

Ok, costumes and make-up!  There is an exceptional amount of eye-liner, but this is normal for U-Kiss and is not done to the point of Panda, so yay.  My personal theory is that they're wearing an inch thick make up but it's so well done that you don't notice.  I think this because of how cold it looks in that warehouse they're dancing in.  See their breath?  When it's that cold, your face turns red, or at least mine does.  Your nose gets red, your cheeks get rosy.  It's just what happens.  But none of U-Kiss resembled Rudolph or those rosy cheeked gnomes

 

so I'm assuming that they had make-up caked on their faces to keep them looking normal.  You have to assume that they were on this freezing set for a couple hours, right?  Naturally, they should have changed color at least a little!  So good job to the make-up artists!

Their denim costumes had a lot of metal.  A lot.  I really liked their black costumes.  Very chic and not overdone.  

Oh, and I really liked the girl's contacts.  Personally, I thought they made her look exotic and exciting.  The only thing that detracted, and it was very slight indeed, was that she didn't blink.  She drew too much attention to them, implying that they were new to her too.  If she had made them seem just a little more common place, it would have made the effect better.  I can't find a picture of her, but if you watched the video, I'm sure you saw it.

Ok, I'm going to take a stab at the meaning of the song.  They're singing about burning while the girl is standing still and something about him being lost in the maze.  So, I'm going to interpret that as, she is verbally or emotionally abusive, hurting him badly, but he's so lost in love with her that he can't leave her.  Meanwhile, she's not changing and keeps hurting him.  Yeah... that's what I'm going with.  My boyfriend offers a different interpretation.  He thinks that she's dumping him cruelly.  That the maze is him being lost without her. Meh.  Either way, it's not a happy situation for poor Ukiss!

Overall, like the song, like the video.  It's not one I'm going to be passionate about, but it provides amusement with the Sexily putting out the fire dance and all the english words, and energy when I feel like dancing about like a dork.  

B.A.P. One Shot Review

Disclaimer:  I do not own BAP, I don't own their music.  I don't own their videos.  I am in no way associated with this group.  Please don't sue me for putting my opinion out there!

 Alrighty then!  As a fan, I really enjoyed the singing.  I thought there was a bit much of the rapping (which I've had to just accept from B.A.P.), never my favourite part of kpop songs.  BAP has either the lowest voices of all kpop boy bands or the most strained, trying to be lowest.   I thought One Shot was catchy.

I liked the video, except for the part at about 5:42, where the last singer alive shoots the last guy on the other side and that horrible special effect with the blood spatter breaks the mood by oozing cheese.  It looks more like a camera man was shot than the gangster.  That was the only part I really cringed.

Also, I want to know what kind of gang BAP was.  I mean, are they killers?  Thieves?  Bored kpop idols with too much time and money on their hands? 

  Because, I’m not sure how I feel about the second ending where the kidnapee turns out to be a cop who staged the whole thing.  I mean, if they were just a group of friends who were coerced into stealing $10,000,000 to save a guy’s life, they were set up!  As Eat Your Kimchi pointed out, that's entrapment and completely illegal.  On the other hand, if they were car thieves or a real, murdering, street gang, well then good on the cop!  A little creative rule bending to get them off the street is ok with me!  So my take on the second ending really needs a little back story.  And a little bit beside the point, but still relevant, I'm not sure I’d call the cops if my friend was kidnapped either.  We've all seen enough movies to know how that usually ends.  

Did anyone else notice that they were in America?  With the American money and SWAT team rushing in

 I guess if you were going to kidnap and ransom a guy from a rival gang, this is the gang to do it to.  I mean, look at them!  The makeup, the hair, the feux fur and the bedazzled jacket that says  “rich.”  I’d rather kidnap from them, than say, a real American gang (No offence to the real Asian/American gang members.  I'm not saying they can't be intimidating or dangerous, I'm just saying that BAP isn't)

Maybe they stole more than $10M from that armored truck.  Maybe they spent the extra on clothing? Because before, they wore tank tops and jeans, then it suddenly, woosh! Look at all the bling!

As for the dance, this, on his back, sideways running dance at 2:11 got mixed feelings from me.  On the one hand, it’s new and got my attention and is interesting!  Yay!  On the other hand, it’s probably never been done before for a reason.  I’m not really sure if I like it or not.

 Jury’s still out, leaning toward liking it so long as it stays out of the clubs. As for the main chorus dance, is anyone else reminded of a lizard by the push-up bit?

My boyfriend would like to mention something he thought important.  "One observation, apart from the bunch of partying girls on the yacht there are no other females in the video, not even in the gang, you know, sometimes they do have partners. Although I do think the amount of femininity of the kpop kids is significant enough for an average music video."  Lol, got to love the non-kpop fans.  

 One last observation from me.  BAP has a strange mix of minimalism and excess going on in this video. We’ve got the party on the yacht in the intro, an incredible amount of styling gel, a hummer and a jet.  And then, BAP brings hand guns to rescue their friend, when, if you’ll notice, they have a tank.  I mean, they have a tank and they didn’t use it to get their friend back.  Maybe they deserved the first ending?  

Erm, did the other gang know they had a tank?  I certainly wouldn't mess with a gang that had a tank.

 Great sets!  The subway was a fairly realistic place to make a money for kidnappee transfer, or at least that what Hollywood would have us believe, anyway.  Loved their little concrete room and the car garage and the airport hangar.  It was all very authentically American action flick stuff.

I loved the guys’ faces as their friend gets shot in the first ending.  They were perfect.  This tells me that they’d make better actors than some other kpop idols who have branched out into TV, and who shall remain nameless.

Ok, that second one is fake, but I liked it.

And for the lyrics, they’re all about having one shot to make something of our lives, to “shine the light like Martin Luther King.”  So at first I thought that it was the band who were taking control and being proactive about their lives, but by the end of the second ending I thought that it was the cop who was taking initiative.  He hadn’t waiting to collect enough evidence to arrest the two groups, but instead initiated a kidnapping and theft!  Wow, he didn’t step back on the endless path, but threw himself at the world, as they say in the song.

Congrats BAP on another powerful song.  And for anyone living under a rock who have not seen eat your kimchi's review of this song, here it is (don't sue me for this either, don't own, no associations, etc)

  

Teen Top's Miss Right Review

Disclaimer:  I do not own Teen Top.  I do not own Miss Right.  I am in no way associated with whoever manages Teen Top or the person/people who wrote the song.  No suing me please!

I can't say I loved this song from the very beginning, but now it's one of my favorites.  It grew on me quickly.

I have only one question.  What crime to I have to commit, and where do I need to commit it in order to perform Community Service with these guys?!?  I volunteer!  I bet most people don't get to have pillow fights with gorgeous guys in their jail cells.  Would kind of defeat the whole idea of punishment, wouldn't it.

Ok, I have that out of my system now, so on with the review.

This is my favorite Teen Top music video since Supa Luv.  And I enjoyed this one more.  They have far less make-up on than in Supa Luv (Yay) and look a little more grown up (which is nice for a nuna [noona?] like me).  There's some serious eye liner, but no more so than almost any other boy Kpop music video.

Lol, did anyone else think, "Fail" at 27/28 seconds when one of the guys (if they have one more amazing song I'll bother to learn their names) gets this incredibly vicious look on his face and acts like he's going to punch the locker closed, but actually just shuts it gently? It kinda fits with these 'criminals' who are all wearing really flamboyant clothes and make-up.  What image are they really trying to portray??

Another of my Fav parts of the video is at 2:09.  The guy shaking his hand in front of his face?  I think I like it so much because it's so silly.  It reminds me of something a guy would do when he's drunk, or trying to make his friends laugh.  I love that he doesn't seem to take himself very seriously!

The next mentionable moment is the goofy smile at 1:12 because I think so many people can relate.  We've all smiled like this when our mom is trying to take our picture, right?  It was just so normal, and something you don't see famous idol people do very often, especially not in music videos!

Ok, I enjoyed quite a few bits of their dance for this video.  Objectively, and to be honest, the dance wasn't as physically or visually impressive as some others, but it was fun and a little amusing.  I like the, well, I'm going to call it the feminine record scratching like at 2:30, and also the, erm, weird hoppy, tilted hat dance thing at 1:16.

And just in case you want to see the whole dance, here's the dance version.

The costumes were good.  I have nothing to complain about.  I usually don't like gloves, as evidenced by my complaints of Max's in Keep Your Head Down, and another in F.Cuz's in Wanna Be Your Love in earlier reviews, but I thought the gloves in this video added to the hand shaking dance.  At one point I decided that the guys had asked for all the dangly stuff to be added to the gloves because it was hot in the studio and it helped to fan them as they did their thing.  Heh.

The only other costume I would like to point out is on the guy in front of the group at 2:15 in the dance version.  Does this shirt remind anyone else of Fred Flinstone?  Red shirt, black spots, blue tie?  Ok, maybe it's just me.

There's not a lot of English in the song.  Just the Teen Top is back, and Oh baby you got me crazy.  ...Unless  you count the "La la la la la la's" which I don't.  But it was good English, better than Supa Luv's so their improving!  Woot!

For those who don't speak Korean and didn't bother to read the english subtitles, the song is about a guy who saw a girl with long straight hair and he fell in love.  He says that he didn't think he'd be the kind to do love at first sight, and that he can't stop thinking about her.  It's pretty cute.  

Bottom line, Good Job Teen Top.  I'm back on your fan list.  And I want to say that I don't think this song has gotten the attention it deserves!

Nu'Est Hello Review

I do not own Nu'est or their music or their videos or anything else having to do with k-pop.  I just had a strong reaction to this song and wanted to write about it.

I purposefully used the music video with the translation because the music and singing are pretty but I wanted everyone to know what they were actually singing about.  Hello is catchy.  I've listened to it a few times and find myself humming it throughout the day.  I've been a Nu'est fan since Face came out.  It's still one of my favorite kpop songs.

Ok, I'm going to say some negative things about this song now, so if you're one of those fans who can't stand their obsessions being criticized, please feel free to navigate away from this page now!

I dislike this song.  Love the music.  Hate the words.  Spineless.  That's the word that stuck stubbornly in my mind.  This guy sees his girlfriend cheating on him and he's a doormat!  "Have you eaten?"  "I'm worried about you."  Really??  My personal favorite member of Nu'est is Ren, and my little Nu'estian heart goes pitter pat when he's looking at the girl, all vulnerable and stuff.  But jeeze!  I can't imagine staying with a guy who acts like they do!  Have some self respect!  Get angry!  Dump the two-timer or at the very least confront her and demand the respect you deserve.

I can't help but think that every girl has had some experience with the guys who are 'too nice.'  I know I have.  It's boring.  Being the center of someone's world to the point where you never know what they're really thinking because everything that made them attractive in the first place is buried under a thick layer of adulation is irritating.

A woman can't respect a man who throws his own self-respect away with both hands. Even if a guy doesn't happen to look like Korean jail bait, he shouldn't allow himself to be walked all over like this. I cheered when that guy got slapped for being such a wuss!

Did anyone else think it was just a little odd that the guys were using pay phones?  In most Korean dramas, the characters have the newest cell phones available, all decked out in charms (if it's a girl's phone).  Kind of gives the impression that most people have mobiles, right?  Why, then, is Nu'est using payphones?  Could it be because the girlfriend is so disgusted with their smothering that she's refused to answer calls from their numbers?  I can understand that.

OK, I think that covers the worst of it.  I didn't particularly like the dance. It was very simple and repetitive, but as Hello is ballady, I was thrilled that it had a dance at all. I did like the holding the tie away from the body bit.  So yay!

Make-up, well done.  It highlighted instead of detracting.   Costumes, looking good.  They were mostly wearing clothes that wouldn't look too out of place in the everyday life of a super-model.

I continue to be a fan of Nu'est but liked their songs Face and Action more than this simpering, whining, suffocating song.

And now something just a little extra, Nu'est was kind enough to help the coordinationally-challenged (like me) by breaking down their dance moves in a special video.  And here it is.

Physiological Reactions

This post is mostly because we're studying the connection between emotion and physical reactions in school right now.  It's just made me pay more attention to what my body does when I'm emotionally stimulated.

Today I was following random posts and pictures on Facebook until I found myself on an Ex's wall.  Meh.  I didn't feel much besides a mild, morbid curiosity to see how his relationship was doing after two years.  When there was no information about it, I clicked on his wife's wall.  I scrolled down and, as she doesn't post very much apparently, I soon found a post that she had written about me almost a year ago.  I'd known about the post because my current boyfriend was angry about it back then.  I hadn't cared enough to read it for myself.

Anyway, I read it today.  As my eyes swept over the insults and death threat, my heart started thudding loudly and heavily in my chest.  My breathing sped up.  I probably started sweating a little.  It's so weird.  I was sitting comfortably in my home, thousands of miles away from this woman reading something she'd written a year ago, and my body was reacting as if I were face to face with her!

I wonder if it was just the memory of our confrontation which triggered the fight or flight rush of adrenalin.  I don't think that my emotions while reading the post were anywhere near strong enough to invoke that kind of physical reaction.  I navigated away from her page feeling vaguely anxious and a little distressed that the post had affected me so strongly.

Not that I've had too much time to think about it, but the only explanation that I think might explain what happened is that, because her post invoked such a powerful memory (she was the most aggressively confrontational person I've talked to in a long time.  She was so mean that I cried after our exchange) and memory is strong enough to affect physiological responses, my adrenalin started pumping. Once my heart was pounding, my brain decided that there must be a reason my body was acting this way, and that reason must be because I was in some kind of danger so it produced fear, as the most logical reason for it.

I know that this makes me sound really passive.  Could I have controlled my reaction if I'd wanted to?  If I'd really tried?  I doubt it.  I wasn't expecting the reaction.  Like I said, that episode is supposed to be far, far behind me, both chronologically and physically.  I didn't anticipate the physical reaction, so I could not prepare for it and try to subdue it.  Afterwards, I was so busy being surprised that I didn't even try to control or analyze it until I was already calming down naturally.

It's been about half an hour now, and my heart still beats a little faster whenever I remember the post or my conversation with the woman. Though now I believe it is more anger than stress or fear.  It is a little distressing that it still affects me so readily.