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Okay, Bibotta, if this is where you got the idea to go on a granny-squares-vest kick, all is forgiven.
(pic sources: top, bottom)
sojung.lc:
애슐리더 생일 🎁🎀 (trans: Ashley's birthday)
I don’t even care that I can’t understand most of what’s going on except for Ashley heroically pulling high-stamina interpreter bilingual duty, I’m just so damn glad to see them all together.
Ladies’ Code, “Galaxy,” 2015 Red Velvet, “Dumb Dumb,” 2014 both videos directed by Jo Bum Jin of VM Project (source)
@pfgexpress, this alleged Perfume-plagiarism problem goes even deeper than first thought: it even applies to groups with more than three members.
There’s a companion video for Ashley, Sojung, and Zuny, but I’m highlighting this one for obvious reasons.
(Dang, but both of them -- EunB in particular -- knew how to give Doni and Coni material to work with.)
I would put "Kiss Kiss" over "Pretty Pretty" by a nose: "Pretty Pretty" has the more interesting chorus, but "Kiss Kiss" is more interesting lyrically and relies less on Sojung's ad-libbing.
I know this is a petty thing to say, in light of what came later -- the accident was within a month of the close of promotions for "Kiss Kiss" -- but dang, RiSe's styling here was unfortunate. On the other hand, we got Tan!Ashley and Zuny as potential comic actress -- Polaris is going to keep them away from anything even remotely comic this comeback and maybe even the next one, assuming they get that far, but I hope someday Zuny gets to try some comic material again.
Live performance from August 7, 2014. Sojung isn’t regarded as the best dancer, so the choreography (much better than that for “Pretty Pretty” and “So Wonderful,” by the way) so RiSe and EunB are frequently in front even as she’s singing. Spare a thought for the EunB fan you can hear screaming in joy in the background.
Fair warning: there’s a shot in the video of RiSe as a half-dismembered mannequin, which was merely startling at the time and now feels horrible to see. Here’s a live performance of “So Wonderful” from February 2014, as an alternative, and their “Let’s Dance.”
I originally found “So Wonderful” a disappointment, in its similarities to “Pretty Pretty,” and didn’t change my mind until I read Nicole Rivera’s championing of it over at Pop Reviews Now. (See, y’all? Never be afraid to mount intelligent defenses of your faves.) Listening to it now, I really wish they hadn’t gone with the doll concept for the video. Not just because of the retrospective discomfort I talked about above, or because “Hate You” has a fresher and more effective doll-concept video, but because the energy of the song (especially the middle eight, which was probably the best use of all five voices LC ever got) gets drained away in the static poses. This is the only single of pre-tragedy LC that’s better listened to than watched.
At the time (fall 2013) I wasn't a big fan of "Pretty Pretty." The song isn't bad (though I remember snarking something about refraining from calls of "let's get it funky now" if your song is not actually funky -- since I am a leading expert on what is and is not funky). It was more that by the time this was released, Sojung had already spoken publicly about dealing with anorexia and body dysmorphia, so having the women sing Pretty, pretty, I've always been pretty left a bad taste in my mouth. (In the pre-release publicity, they posed with donuts and candies.)
As it would turn out, "Pretty Pretty" would be the first of three singles with a strong resemblance to each other; and the weakest, I'm going to argue. But in retrospect it's nice that one of those three singles started out with RiSe playfully introducing herself as a hottie.
(Also nice, from a visual point of view: RiSe's eye makeup; EunB's five-thousand-percent-done face; the director's teasing Zuny about her cat-eyes line; all the shots of the members playing with their oversized glasses and being relaxed and silly for the camera.)
