Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
MAMAMOO went with an extremely K-pop girl group sound with “Um Oh Ah Yeh“, and while they would struggle to make anything mediocre or boring, this was probably as close as we were gonna get.
While the music video was cute and light, and while I know MAMAMOO are like some kind of progressive international fan’s wet dream or whatever, you know damn well if Big Bang or some shit made a music video about drugging a person, creepily laying hot drugged person on a bed, and then tried to make out with said drugged person while they were lying dying in the hospital, they’d catch a lot of shit. I’ll probably touch on that later just to document this phenomenon if nothing else, but it was sort of weird to see from them, regardless.
Anyway, going back to the music, on one hand, I’m glad they changed their sound up a bit. While I enjoyed their signature sound (even if some others didn’t get the hype), like three tracks in a row sounding similar would’ve been a bit repetitive no matter how quality they were. On the other hand, “Um Oh Ah Yeh” sounds vaguely like something a debuting rookie girl group full of teenagers would release, and MAMAMOO just did it with more vocal talent and less dancing.
The problem? Those tracks are generally just meant to showcase the girl group’s looks, introduce them all, and to make hook dances/choruses. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with those sorts of basic template songs, as I enjoy those concepts as well when they’re truly an earworm. But with “Um Oh Ah Yeh”, it wasn’t particularly catchy, and I think this type of stuff is better left to groups who NEED this concept to mask their talent deficiencies rather than to have vocalists attempt the concept and make everything seem sort of odd.
I really do appreciate MAMAMOO’s attempt at venturing out of their comfort zone and maybe even trying to show cookie-cutter girl groups how their songs could sound, but for them at this stage it seemed more a waste of a comeback than anything else.
