Battle of the Title Tracks: BoA’s “Copy & Paste” vs. Chakra’s “ Oh! My Boy” vs. Hello Venus’s “Sticky Sticky”
As a spin-off to my Battle of the B-sides feature, I’m pleased to announce the arrive of “Battle of the Title Tracks!” In this feature, I’ll be pitting three K-pop title tracks/singles against each other and choosing a winner. These songs will mostly be from pre-2016 since I’ll try to focus on music I haven’t yet written about on the blog.
As always, the competition is all in good fun. Most importantly, I hope you discover (or re-discover) some great songs!
Battle of the Title Tracks: Round Six BoA – Copy & Paste (2010)
I miss repackaged albums! They allowed for a re-invigoration of an already strong piece of work and often resulted in great singles freed from the scrutiny of a full-on comeback. This was a great era for BoA (and K-pop as a whole), so any addition to the Hurricane Venus album was going to be very welcome. Copy & Paste hinges on a slinky, seesawing synth hook but makes sure to add plenty of actual song around that instrumental so that every moment is enjoyable. I love the push and pull tension of the chorus, contrasted by the hyper-rhythmic verses. BoA was always a daughter of Janet Jackson and you can really hear that on this track. It’s a fantastic, elastic groove.
So… you think cultural appropriation is bad in K-pop now? Well, take a trip back to the first gen acts and you’ve got a whole new reality to contend with. Taking that hotbed topic out of the equation and simply focusing on Oh! My Boy as a piece of music, there’s plenty to enjoy in a very cheesy way. Its “tropical” (big quotes, there) vibes are completely plundered but also quite addictive. I love the brassy segments, especially. The girls’ delivery is… questionable at best, offensive at worst. However, the whole thing is also kind of a shameful bop.
Moving from one controversy to the next, we have the era of highly sexualized girl groups. I can’t say I miss the strip show aesthetics, but I do miss the music. Producers like Brave Brothers highlighted this particular sub-genre with their slinky electro grooves and hushed layers of vocal. This feels very much like an AOA knockoff (they pulled the sound off more convincingly), but a knockoff of an enjoyable sound is still pretty enjoyable itself. Much of Sticky Sticky (that title is… something) is simply moans and whispered whimpers set to music, so your enjoyment will certainly depend on your tolerance for that. However, there’s a real stealth catchiness undergirding the whole affair. I think I probably skipped this back in 2014, but by today’s standards I find the sound refreshing and nostalgic.
Readers, what do you think? Leave your own ranking in the comments!
Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by beatsway.
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