I would say that I hate to beat a dead horse, but this horse ain't even close to going down.
People think I started out just hatin' on these girls, but the funny thing is that I started out not only with a positive initial impression of them, I was actually pretty jazzed that someone (JYP, no less!) was doing 80's revival music. I was actually pumped when I saw the pre-debut marketing stuff.
But alas, I was greatly disappointed, and perhaps because I had such high expectations – but certainly not because I am no longer able to enjoy pop silliness. As I said recently, the group and the girls simply have no talent whatsoever, which calls even further into question why we are listening and looking at them on stage, besides the pedophilically obvious.
Besides the obvious similarities to one of my favorite little 80's songs haunting my iPod, the original song better conveys an actual sexy feel, and Stacey Q also can't dance to save her life, and her lip-syncing looks like she ain't even trying. But check out 1:24! Says Stacey, "You came in the nick of time!" as she rears back to not-so-subtly simulate fellating the microphone. Oh, the things I totally missed when I was young and innocent! Who knew? This is hilarious. At least it's clear what this song's really about, if you listen closely to its spare lyrics.
"Come on, come on," indeed! (And this ain't the first time, either. Check out this page, with a very familiar song that'll play when you click the first blue play symbol on the page. Just scroll down a bit. It has a couple of nice comparisons between these two songs.)
As I established when looking at the original marketing of the Wonder Girls, back when JYP hit reset on the group and changed their look from bad schoolgirl uniforms to retro 80's, they were actually doing a cool job with their whole look, including an electronica 80's, rasterized video game background that did a good job of flashing me back to middle school, acid-washed jeans, and catchy tunes. I was actually looking forward to the group's debut, and loved what I called their "nostalgia marketing." (And if you look on this page, you can see why I had no idea this girl was 14, and even if I had, i didn't have any particular problems with her look.) I even had some Photoshop fun adding in video game elements to the obviously video game-esque backgrounds, because, well, I'm a dork.
I'm also intensely nostalgic about 80's music and always fantasized that somebody would capitalize on us 30-somethings wanting a revival of that bubble-gum genre of pure silliness.
Then I saw the Wonder Girls actually perform.
I ain't no ethnomusicologist, but "come on, come on." My opinion on them changed 180 degrees because the girls are simply untalented. Period. I even admit that I kinda like the catchy tune, but think it's ruined by these non-singin', non-dancin' girls who reek of jailbait.
And let's admit that this song is pretty derivative, something I could forgive if it were actually performed well, in the same way that Korea (and most importantly, Cypress Hill) forgave Seo Taiji and the Boys for blatantly ripping off, on their 4th album, not only their musical style, but the timbre and tenor of their voices when rapping, the samples, and even CH's very distinct and identifiable signature traits: the nasal, monotone, and staccato progressions, the abrupt pauses in the middle of songs, and even the peculiar mixture of rap with electric guitar riffs and eerie, scratchy jazz pseudo-samples.
But Seo Taiji and the Boys had their snowboarding thing, they could dance their asses off, and they just looked fucking cool. All the foreigners at the time loved them, if not mostly because "Come Back Home" reminded us of Cypress Hill's "Insane in the Membrane" and "How I Could Just Kill a Man" merged into a single tune.
And no, I'm not getting all old fogey just because I'm using an old example. The Wonder Girls could have been great, despite the breathy and plaintive moaning of the lyrics, the obvious use of electronicky keyboards and old-school, Casio-era synthesizer drums, and even the signature "Wow, I bought a sampler!" overuse of the electronic stutter that is Stacey Q to a T.
It all coulda been fun, except that, unlike Seo Taiji and his colleagues, the Wonder Girls can't pull off even holding their own tune together.
That's all I'm saying.
Oh, besides the fact that Sohee looks like Jodi Foster dolled up for dirty dollars in the movie Taxi Driver, that is.
I think it's cool that there's this new community of people growing around doing the dance. And it's hilarious to see what people do with all that extra time on their hands. The participants in the new "imagined community" of "Tell Me" run the gamut from soldiers, girls studying for the college entrance exam, and even video game characters. I find the "Soldier's Version" ever the more interesting, although somehow disturbing. Those guys hit their marks, though!
This school version cracks me up. Watch the teacher in the back and note the students in the front when the refrain starts.
Now, this has made my day. Frickin' game characters. Now, that's hella funny. So, I'll admit it. I'm catching this damn "Tell Me Wave". You can only look into the darkness so long before it starts to look back, you know.
As Charleton Heston's character screamed when he gazed upon the proof of the utter hopelessness of his struggle at the end of Planet of the Apes, "Damn you, talentless, pubescent Wonder Girls! Damn you all to Hell!"