Riding the love-hate
AKB48 stage songs come in a few compositional quality varieties:
Shit
Shit/Forgettable unless your oshimen is performing it/costuming is fetishtastic/dance is awesome
Dirty fucking bubblegum cheaters, like this song
Somewhere between good and cheating
Costuming, staging and choreography are completely separate qualifiers from song quality, as a shitty song might be saved by being fetish or shenanigans-tastic, and of course how the performer treats it. I've got plans for an entire series of posts about how AKB48 has made salvaging shitty songs an art. Conversely, a "good" stage song might suffer from nonexistent choreography, mismatched outfits to the lyrical content, or be saddled with performers that can't fulfill the song's potential. Thank Aki-P for shuffles, then.
This song is a big fat CHEATER.
Shitty production with possibly the cheapest brass and strings synths ever plus freaking chimes and glock. Cheap bubblegum doesn't get more textbook than that. You have non-descript voices singing textbook melodies in the verse which are pleasant but rather forgettable on first listen because they're so fucking obvious. Some harmonizing is introduced during the pre-chorus, which again are really textbook. However, the purpose of this pre-chorus is solely to ramp up to the chorus with the long notes, and it does its job. And then we reach the chorus...
BAM. BUBBLEGUM GOLD. THIS IS SO FUCKING UNFAIR. I AM NOW OBLIGATED TO LOVE THIS SONG FOREVER and everything in the cheap production becomes a strength, WTF SONG IHY BUT NOT REALLY BECAUSE ILU SFM. FUCK YOU WHY ARE YOU SO AMAZING UGH.
There's even harmonizing wtf! It takes SNSD three albums to start having harmonic choruses and AKB48's doing them from the very beginning using weak-ass voices that soon left the group.(every one of the girls here either graduated or moved to SDN48) Choreography that doesn't matter one bit and outfits that show just how much AKB48 is a true worshipper of the retro, and then WHAT THE FUCK THIS GUITAR SOLO IS BETTER THAN ANY IN KPOP. And then of course they hit us with another round of that irresistable chorus. Sigh. I give up. *bathes in the bubblegum*
Of course, with repeated listenings, I love the the verse and pre-chorus now, too.
Shit
Shit/Forgettable unless your oshimen is performing it/costuming is fetishtastic/dance is awesome
Dirty fucking bubblegum cheaters, like this song
Somewhere between good and cheating
Costuming, staging and choreography are completely separate qualifiers from song quality, as a shitty song might be saved by being fetish or shenanigans-tastic, and of course how the performer treats it. I've got plans for an entire series of posts about how AKB48 has made salvaging shitty songs an art. Conversely, a "good" stage song might suffer from nonexistent choreography, mismatched outfits to the lyrical content, or be saddled with performers that can't fulfill the song's potential. Thank Aki-P for shuffles, then.
This song is a big fat CHEATER.
Click to viewShitty production with possibly the cheapest brass and strings synths ever plus freaking chimes and glock. Cheap bubblegum doesn't get more textbook than that. You have non-descript voices singing textbook melodies in the verse which are pleasant but rather forgettable on first listen because they're so fucking obvious. Some harmonizing is introduced during the pre-chorus, which again are really textbook. However, the purpose of this pre-chorus is solely to ramp up to the chorus with the long notes, and it does its job. And then we reach the chorus...
BAM. BUBBLEGUM GOLD. THIS IS SO FUCKING UNFAIR. I AM NOW OBLIGATED TO LOVE THIS SONG FOREVER and everything in the cheap production becomes a strength, WTF SONG IHY BUT NOT REALLY BECAUSE ILU SFM. FUCK YOU WHY ARE YOU SO AMAZING UGH.
There's even harmonizing wtf! It takes SNSD three albums to start having harmonic choruses and AKB48's doing them from the very beginning using weak-ass voices that soon left the group.(every one of the girls here either graduated or moved to SDN48) Choreography that doesn't matter one bit and outfits that show just how much AKB48 is a true worshipper of the retro, and then WHAT THE FUCK THIS GUITAR SOLO IS BETTER THAN ANY IN KPOP. And then of course they hit us with another round of that irresistable chorus. Sigh. I give up. *bathes in the bubblegum*
Of course, with repeated listenings, I love the the verse and pre-chorus now, too.