Sunday, July 24, 2011

First Take: miss A's Goodbye Baby

Another corner! Imma be like those other blogs and provide easier, more approachable (?) corners. This next corner is called First Take, and it's pretty much my take of a certain anything the first time I watched/listened/saw it. Okay so here we go!


The first up is miss A's new comeback single, "Goodbye Baby."

I'm not really too fond of many girl groups. One because I'm a girl, and I still like boys over girls. And two because they (K-pop girl groups) tend to go a little too extreme with their images. If they go for cute it's diabetic sweet and if they try for sexy they usually end up slutty. Miss A is different, and me likey.

Ever since they first came into K-pop, they took the whole industry by storm. Their debut single, "Bad Girl, Good Girl" took all the awards during their promotional period. Yes, this is their first attempt. I have to admit that was one good song. Their next single, "Breathe", is a fun, unique song with a reggae twist. Yes, K-pop + reggae. Well, at least I think it's reggae. "Bad Girl, Good Girl" went for sexy and "Breathe" took on cute. If it were other girl groups I would probably roll my eyes and say "Here we go again with the identity crisis". But they were sexy without the hooch and cute without the gag. With their approaching comeback, I couldn't help but anticipate because I know they'll do a good job. And they did, thank goodness.


"Goodbye Baby" let us see miss A back into the sexy but a little more upgraded. Let's say "Bad Girl, Good Girl" was like assertive girl sexy (does that make sense?), but "Goodbye Baby" was like sexy woman sexy. They looked more mature and sophisticated and I really like their concept. It's very simple yet gets the message across. I like how miss A opts for simple and of course this gets my vote, because simple is best. I know that stage costumes need to be over the top but it's refreshing seeing a somewhat simpler design in the spotlight.

The song itself sounds like miss A. I'm always glad when there's still consistency in K-pop. The intro was interesting, and they definitely made good use of bass throughout the song. I don't know all that much about music, so rather than making myself a smartypants, let's just say it's nice music. One thing I'd like to point out about miss A is that all four voices are somewhat similar. I mean, I have a hard time differentiating their voices in the song and I'm pretty good at differentiating voices. For a group, I don't think this is very good. I'm someone who likes variety in voices. Miss A lacks that flavor of varied voices, and this is one of their flaws, at least for me. Another thing that I found a down point of this song is Jia's rap. A lot of people liked this, because it's a strong rap. But for me, it's just awkward. I think I have to blame her accent. I don't speak conversational level Korean but even to me, her Chinese accent sounds too strong. It was an okay rap insert, but not necessary.

The music video was okay. It's not anything special. It's not amazingly original but you can tell they put in effort. The beginning was a little too long for my comfort. But it's definitely better than their previous music videos. The video quality, however, is questionable. I don't know what they're trying to do with the saturated video but it makes the video look cheap. But thankfully it doesn't stay for long and they went for high-def in the main dance sequence.

Overall, I like their comeback. It's a great production and smooth image upgrade. They bring something new to the K-pop table every time and that's good. Performance-wise they haven't made that much development but I like where things are headed.

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