I hadn't been near music for some months and I recently went to check out what has been going on among K-Pop groups I like. One of them is Everglow. I went to listen to "Slay" and I was disappointed.
Everglow has historically been a group that tries to be really tough and cool, and I've always found that their music videos have imaginative and wall-breaking machinery in them, so that calling their music cool feels safe. But Slay felt like it was just demanding a label of "cool" without earning it. I did not see coolness in its core machinery.
I have not added Slay to my playlists.
Something similar happened to Itzy's Born to Be. It's not that I don't think it is cool. I don't think Itzy is the type of group that strives to be cool like Everglow does. The sound of Born to Be is generic to my ears, particularly the chorus, even though its opening gimmick is catchy.
The sound of Itzy's Untouchable is okay and I added it to my playlists.
The group I've found a surprising affinity for is Red Velvet. I love how weird their music is. It's consistently weird and yet right on target. I've dug up some of their less popular songs, like "Nightmare" and "In My Dreams" and they're terrific finds. I have a small playlist of Red Velvet music that I prefer to, say, a small playlist of Twice music.
Blackpink has a couple of entries on my very large playlist, but a lot of their early hits I've excluded (even though they were quite good). I'm just not interested in their old stuff at this time.
