Trouble Maker Go Mobile (Gun Crazy In Korea 2)
Real good overinterpretation of the new Trouble Maker video "There Is No Tomorrow (Now)," comment posted by YouTube commenter hyunseungtwin 8 minutes ago:
The music video follows the story of the musical "Bonnie and Clyde". They're a couple, both who are criminals. Both try to forget each other but they can't because they still love each other. ( Read more... )
The music video follows the story of the musical "Bonnie and Clyde". They're a couple, both who are criminals. Both try to forget each other but they can't because they still love each other. ( Read more... )
Yeah, I see similarities and lifts, the candy-colored shimmer of "There Is No Tomorrow"'s alcohol echoing the candy-colored pills in "We Found Love," a brief car scene in WFL possibly inspiring the extended circling-car motif in "No Tomorrow," flames in each vid, shots out in the fields. WFL is explicit that the relationship is doomed by its own dynamic, while "No Tomorrow" adds to this the idea of a world closing in on our couple (or is this me being overinfluenced by hyunseungtwin's blurb?).
That said, "There Is No Tomorrow" has a different feel, garish to WFL's gritty, and the sense that the characters are caught in their life and their roles, not just in their passion.
I don't see that lifting from Rihanna and from the West in general is in any way antithetical to K-pop, or that it means HyunA's not doing it her way. I guess one man's archetypal is another man's hackneyed, but doomed lovers on the lam seems like a fine theme to hang a video on; is a logical followup to the "Trouble Maker" vid, the spy-versus-spy intrigues of that one dooming the couple as much as rootlessness and alcohol doom the couple in "No Tomorrow." Trouble is the duo's theme, after all.
As music, "We Found Love" never took me beyond ho-hum. In principle I like that Rihanna decided to take her voice of burnt sorrow and apply it to bright and catchy tunes, rather than flogging her sorrow to eternity. But except for a few tracks (e.g. "S&M") the result just felt compromised. Whereas HyunA's vocals, simultaneously pugnacious and inviting, seem adaptable to pretty much anything. And she's always been willing to go in any direction one following upon the other; e.g., when Bubble Pop"'s happy hip-thrusting choreography got banned from TV, she followed with the haughty mob boss of "Just Follow" sitting in near stillness. Just seems to be what she does, having a gas trying this thing, then that, then a third.
(I was about to say that "There Is No Tomorrow" has nothing like the immediate catchiness of "Trouble Maker," but then I remembered that the latter took a month or so to reach me. Eventually I came to the same conclusion the Korean public had already come to, that it was going to be a classic; don't think "No Tomorrow" will get there, or will continually entrap me in its mood as 4minute's "Volume Up" does to this day. All but three of the tracks I've mentioned in this comment are by Shinsadong Tiger, by the way (the three exceptions being "We Found Love," "S&M," and "Just Follow").)
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