Recently, The Boyz made their Japanese debut with Tattoo. But Tattoo is one of the most confusing releases yet. It is their entrance to the Japanese market. But as far as I am concerned, the song only contains a line of Japanese (the rest of the song is in Korean). I have yet to find an explanation for this yet, as I have no idea of what to make of this situation. Furthermore, I am not exactly sure which category of music this goes into. But anyhow, we are here to have a closer listen to Tattoo!

Tattoo departs from the brighter sounds we got from the group through the releases of Bloom Bloom and D.D.D this year. Tattoo does seem to satisfy my craving for an edgy comeback from the group, particularly since they left 2018 with No Air, which happens to be one favourite song from tracks from the group. But I felt the instrumental to be very boring. There wasn’t anything added to the mix to really grab our attention or help make the track somehow standout. The vocals were pretty much similar. And together, it resulted in a bland track. However,  there were a few parts of the song which I enjoyed. These are small details, so they don’t cancel out the blandness encountered. The chorus had a nice melody, especially the opening line to the chorus. I really liked how the bridge was posed as well. I also enjoyed the rapping of this track. The ‘Black and Blue‘ in the pre-chorus was also quite memorable alongside that first line of the chorus. Actually, anything that involved English sounded really good in this track (i.e. Kevin’s line in the bridge).

Two things the music video did really well was its cinematography (i.e. camera work, angles etc.) and the constructed sets. They really helped give the video and song an epic feel. I also liked the closeups of the members in this video. There was something captivating about them, especially for the members who were dancing for their closeups. The video does have this blandness to it, thanks to the hazy nature. But I thought everything else was done well and this really helped the video stand out in my opinion.

The choreography for this comeback comes off as striking for me. There were a lot of moments that I liked (i.e. chorus, the start of the bridge etc.). I liked how the dance really fitted into the different beats of the song. Most groups do this. But I thought this was well-balanced and worth mentioning. During the slower moments, everything was flowy. During the chorus, when the beat was a lot harder, their moves reflected this change in a way that didn’t feel overwhelming.

Song – 6/10
Music Video – 9/10
performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 7.5/10