July 2015 – Page 2 – KPOPREVIEWED

A rising girl group, Mamamoo have made their comeback with Um Oh Ah Yeah. After getting recognition as best rookie girl group last year at the Gaon Chart Awards, and their recent collaboration with e.SNa (Ahh Oop!), the girls have been rising quite highly. This release is the first comeback with the girls topping charts and essentially proving to the KPOP industry that good vocals are still in the game. I really enjoyed their debut and Piano Man and this comeback is the same. As in I totally enjoy it. Not that is the same comeback. You know what I mean. But I’ve been listening to their live stages and WOW. Them fan-chants are getting louder and you can tell that there are more people cheering them on now.

This song is really amazing. I dig all the songs that the group puts out and this song is no exception. I really enjoyed it. I was blown away with the harmonies in Piano Man, so I was a little disappointed when I heard this song, mainly because there was not much of it in the song. From the start to end, I was in awe with the vocal work and the rapping. Each member is pretty good at their thing and their voices work really well with each other. The chorus to me is hella addictive and I liked it how they changed up the song. Maybe the change up slowed down the song a little bit for me, but they girls went straight back to the song and I thought that was really amazing. I loved the end. The cheering that they do is pretty amazing. Another thing I like about Mamamoo’s songs, they can easily be modified for certain stages. And this song with the ending and the mini dialogue towards the end of the song does just that.

I have to be honest. Moonbyul makes a really good looking dude. Many people say she looks like Xiumin from EXO in the video, I think she looks a lot like Minhyuk from BTOB. Also, I love Hwasa’s pervy character and also Wheein’s characters love for food. Disappointing that Solar didn’t cross dress, but she made a very beautiful and sexy maid and air stewardess. It was a little satirical, but I really like how that dialogue part I mentioned before fitted in with the song and music video. It just linked the two so nicely. As for the ending of the video, I thought the girls were rather cute even though they were dressed up as guys, but Wheein with her pizza love. So like me.

Dance was okay. Wasn’t the best part of the comeback. To me, I felt like more could have been done with the dance for this comeback. It just didn’t match up with the song that well. Their past dances had something iconic. This one just lacked.

Overall the comeback was amazing. Though more improvement on the dance would have been nice, everything else was pretty nice. 9/10

After two members announced that they were leaving the popular boy group, MBLAQ last year, the band faced disbandment rumours. However it is safe to say that the band is going strong as they have returned as a trio this time around. Yeah, so if you haven’t heard of it yet, Thunder (now known as Cheondung) and Lee Joon both left MBLAQ after their contracts finished at the end of the year. Before departing, they did release an album of some sort or had a concert. Now Mir, Seungho and G.O make up the MBLAQ group as a trio and still getting supporting from the former members.

We know MBLAQ for their dance associated songs, but this is the first time they were coming back with a ballad. And it is pretty boring to listen to. I listened to it once and never went back to it. It just didn’t hook me on or appeal to me to get me to continue listening. The song is predominately sung by Seungho and G.O, while Mir got a small rapping part. And he too looked kind of bored on stage while performing this song. The vocals were good, but sadly they were not as outstanding like their previous songs. I feel like MBLAQ constricted itself into one corner for this comeback and they haven’t been able to move out of that one corner. I did like G.O’s vocals though in the song. When I first heard the song, I didn’t watch the video so I didn’t know who sang what part. G.O managed to fool me into believing that there was a fourth member and somehow I missed it all. But yeah, just the three members who changed their delivery up for certain parts. But yeah, boring song.

Music video was equally boring. It was dull and lacked anything that I would want to happen in a music video. I know there have been many K-ballad music videos that have done an amazing job and compared to them, this video isn’t worth mentioning. We open them up driving, then running. But for what? For a girl? And even for a girl, those extra scenes wouldn’t help with my understanding. The dance set was extremely lazy. The concept of the doors were a nice touch to the video, but for the rest, I would have expected something more.

There is a dance and it is a ballad. Usually don’t like dances with ballads, but I guess this is what is keeping MBLAQ with their dance group image. Honestly, I felt like the dance could have been removed and nothing would happen.

Overall, it was a boring comeback. I understand that it would be hard for just three guys to dance a choreography especially to their previous single’s extent, but I am sure they could have figured out a way. Sorry if this review was harsh. These were just my honest opinions on it. 1/10