Big Bang get gloriously emo for “Loser” and go on an acid trip with “Bae Bae”

After about seven decades in the pop purgatory of performing “Fantastic Baby” over and over, Big Bang have finally returned with new material, releasing the double title tracks of “Loser” and “Bae Bae” along with the accompanying music videos.

“Loser” is a melancholy, emo track and mood is set perfectly in the song. The chorus is not really a hook as much as it purposefully monotone backing for supplemental runs to be made over it. So in order for this song to work the verses had to make sense, and they do. The vocals are great and the rap is interspersed within to effectively take advantage of the rap-ballad trend. It’s also relatable in the sense that it commits to being a depressing song, so the content has value as well.

The music video consists of them being … well … down-on-their-luck losers for various reasons. It hits on a lot of boy group cliches, but it’s a lot more intense than others in the same category and avoids any of the happy-go-lucky crap. It’s just all misery or violence, and they committed to the concept, which makes it work.

Besides, worst comes to worst, it’s hard to go wrong with T.O.P‘s reason for anguish/murder.

Um … thank you.

“Bae Bae”? Uh, it’s basically one gigantic acid trip…

…which is exactly why it was enjoyable from a humor perspective.

I mean, everybody needed this visual, right?

The song though? I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It’s so disjointed, which is the point, but the quality differs from part to part so drastically, going from G-Dragon‘s ugh rap verse to Taeyang‘s basic and airy vocal section to T.O.P and Daesung saving the song to Seungri trying to put a baby to sleep. The disjointed nature is supposed to make the track better than the summation of its parts with its fun and quirky nature, but it didn’t quite accomplish its goal.

“Bae Bae” seemed more like a song Big Bang made so they could do the type of crazy music video they wanted, which ends up being a solid enough reason for its existence.

—–

After such a long time off, Big Bang fans would’ve happy to hear them do folk rock if that’s what it took to get new material from them. Fortunately, at least “Loser” is a comeback track that was worth the wait, and while “Bae Bae” wasn’t their best effort in terms of song, one could argue that the acid-trip induced music video validated it.

No complaints here.