I’m kind of loving everything popping out of South Korea’s womb this month – it’s as if producers decided, “Hey, there’s a clean slate upon us. So why not set the tone with sheer awesome?” Like they genuinely care about actual musical value and the standard in quality of Korean music. We can do away with the trends and faults in Kpop 2011 and follow the common practice of kicking off a new year on a good note, because Kpop certainly seems to be doing a mighty fine job of it already. If we can avoid a jinx, 2012 may just be the next 2009 (knock on wood).
To feed today’s optimism, I give you Baby Soul & Yoo Jia‘s “She’s A Flirt“. A spawn of Woollim Entertainment (home of boy band INFINITE), this rookie duo recently dropped their first single together, following Baby Soul’s sudden solo debut in November of last year. I’m not sure why Woollim decided to shoot the shit and throw out this duo after a short-lived solo season for Baby Soul or if they had this whole thing planned and she just happened to function as a tease for the group. Either way, I’m glad Woollim kept their word and debuted a female anything. They hit it out of the park with INFINITE, so hopes are currently set at a near high for Baby Soul & Yoo Jia. If their debut single, “She’s A Flirt”, proves anything, it’s that these sweethearts are talented and well aware of where they fit in Kpop.
“She’s A Flirt” is a relaxing slice of k-R&B. Baby Soul & Yoo Jia take a very mellowed approach to this number, singing in very light strokes while narrating a story where they have found out their boyfriends have cheated on ‘em with a fu*king skank, basically.
“They say that you are cheating on me / You, who said that you couldn’t live without me / Rumors of her are so unbelievable – they are too dirty to say // She’s a flirt, why don’t you know? She has so many guys…”
Baby Soul and Yoo Jia’s vocals are velvety smooth here, blended quite nicely during the choruses and delivered in calm tones during the verses. The instrumental has a soothing character of its own, chiming in every so often with sparkly little nuances and enhancing what I feel to be an overly warm atmosphere. The track features INFINITE rapper Dongwoo who does a nice job of delivering a simple rap verse that isn’t overbearing, neither understated. It works as a calm transition to the song’s final chorus. The only piece of this song that threw me off was the random auto-tune bit at the end. I’m not entirely sure what that’s doing there. But other than that, this song is laid-back and captures that ‘calm before the storm’ sensation that lovers face before realizing that their relationship with their significant other is on the brink of collapse.
“She’s A Flirt” MV: lesbian overtones, anyone?
The stupid autotune ruined the whole thing. What’s worse is that it’s even in the acoustic versions :| I literally gasped when I heard it asdkfaj
“But other than that, this song is laid-back and captures that ‘calm before the storm’ sensation that lovers face before realizing that their relationship with their significant other is on the brink of collapse.”
The song is sitting right in between boring, and understated but lovely. For some people, it tipped towards boring. But following your ‘calm before the storm’ analogy a little bit more, Woollim probably isn’t trying to spill all the goods yet and is keeping things nice and simple to prepare for an explosive debut with all the members.
In a way, this is still a teaser for the girl group XD Based on this and Baby Soul’s show stopping No Better Than Strangers, it seems that this girl group will be influenced by RnB the same way Infinite swears by 80s pop :) As far as teasers go, this is one of the best and it genuinely makes me excited for the group unlike some other teasers *coughcoughEXOcoughcough*:) I almost don’t care if they don’t dance, as long as they can sing well and release good music XD
I know, I was buggin out when I heard it on the acoustic too. Totally unnecessary.
Wait – there’s a bigger girl group in the making? That’s (good) news to me. It would actually be even more exciting if Woollim debuted a girl group. I mean, they nailed it with Infinite and they obviously know how to focus their ideas to produce well-thought out concepts and musical styles for their artists.
by the way, they totally failed at conveying the proper message in the MV lmao It’s so “lesbian”, that it kind of ends up giving the song a completely different meaning :x
Yep! Their CEO was all “oh hai thur, we don’t know how many members our girl group will have but it’ll definitely be more than these two~” 8D I do think this guy and his team really know their stuff. Their company manages artists of varying genres and all those artists have released top quality stuff. Even their mainstream idol group’s music is less “mainstream” than other idol music. While I hold a grudge against him for not helping Tablo with his academic controversies (eventually leading to Tablo leaving and most likely taking Epik High with him — consequently killing my Infinite x Epik High collab dreams asjdfklas), I love his company and believe in what they can do XD
I felt the lesbian vibes right when I saw the teaser for this song and no one can convince me that this is BFF-ery or, dear god, a close sibling relationship (I’m inclined to believe these people don’t have siblings :|). Maybe the latent message is “fuck the skank and fuck my boyfriend — I have a girlfriend and we’re happy and hotter than youuuu~”
I actually am still confused as to what the MV means or if there was an actual storyline behind it relating to the song. I think they just went “fuck it!” and shot it like that.
And yeah there will be a girl group. But there are no confirmed numbers, although they have been teasing fans about it. Baby Soul was in Infinite-H’s crying. This Yoo Jiah girl is that girl from Be Mine MV. Another rumored trainee is that girl from Paradise MV and another one is Infinite’s “sister” in their predebut reality show.
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