Pepsi has been one busy company this year. As a partnership with Starship Entertainment to produce The Love of Summer series, Pepsi has pulled together a number of artists to promote their brand. Back in April, Ravi and Eunha came together for Blossom, while last month we saw the return of Ong Seong Woo to the music industry through Heart Sign. Yesterday, another track as part of the series was released. This time around,  they bring Hongbin from VIXX and Hyungwon from MONSTA X together for Cool Love.

Both Hongbin and Hyungwon are not known for their vocals, so it would be interesting to see how a collaboration track between them would turn out. Cool Love had the potential to be a good track. There was just one overwhelming issue with it. It just didn’t cohesively come together to be that good track. This was because the instrumental was a little messy. I thought Cool Love had a nice smooth instrumental for the chorus, which sounded like a song that a model could strut to. It was also my most favourite part of the song, as it did have a memorable rhythm. But the other parts felt like a total mismatch. For example, the dance break added unnecessary flair and felt like it was trying too hard. The start and bridge felt quite weak and didn’t really feel like it complimented the rest of the song. Vocally, I thought they were good. It was clear from the start that they needed the instrumental to help carry them. But they handled it well, despite suffering from the disjointed instrumentation. What I did like was the tone that they displayed, which I think their respective groups should really utilise in the future. I think given my comments, this isn’t my favourite song from the series thus far.

While the song was rather disappointing, the music video was not. Both Hyungwon and Hongbin are known for their visuals and I felt that the music video did an awesome job of showcasing that known fact about them. I did like the sets, which I think suited the tone of the track and looked very cool. What I really liked was that the video didn’t feel too much of a Pepsi commercial like the other videos did. It felt like a normal music video, with the subtle placement of the Pepsi brand/products added. Another part of the music video was the choreography. I won’t dedicate a separate section/rating to it, as we probably won’t see a performance for it and I don’t really have much to say about it. But it looked good, overall.

Song – 5/10
Music Video – 7/10
Overall Rating – 5.8/10