Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
MOMOLAND have beaten the odds recently, not only shooting to relevancy with “Bboom Bboom” out of Duble Kick Company (now MLD Entertainment), but more impressively doing it against the chart curse I put on music I like. Their follow-up with “BAAM” will likely tell us a lot about their continued relevance, and also about their ability to overcome me enjoying their music.
Honestly, it was always going to be difficult for me to dislike this. Why? Because it’s basically a mashup of T-ara‘s “Lovey Dovey” (produced by Shinsadong Tiger) and Crayon Pop‘s “Doo Doom Chit” (produced by somebody seemingly imitating Shinsadong Tiger’s T-ara songs) … so kinda like derivative T-ara. Speaking of similarities, the rap is like straight from Childish Gambino‘s “This Is America“. I’m not sure it was my favorite choice, but terrible/legendary raps were a staple of T-ara as well so that won’t faze me. While one can dock MOMOLAND (and Shinsadong Tiger) points for “BAAM” not bringing anything original to the table, I definitely appreciate the sound making a comeback. After all, if you’re going with retread sounds, then it might as well be awesome ones.
The verses keep pushing things forward at a brisk pace and the seductive pre-chorus is a nice setup and build, but the chorus is obviously the highlight here, and it centers around the memorable “bam bam bam” hook. However, thankfully it does flesh things out more with vocals throughout before dropping back into a dance break. Things can get murky in that territory if the instrumental isn’t appealing, but thankfully it was right up my alley with a pulsating beat and things primarily revolving around the appealing saxophone riff. The energetic dance track (that uses shuffling as well, might I add) has a natural allure that’s fun and eminently danceable.
Nothing about “BAAM” strikes me as necessarily original (besides the music video), but this still represents a quality consolidating effort after their surprise breakout hit with “Bboom Bboom”. Setting the predictably lazy parallels between those two songs aside, MOMOLAND actually head further down the road toward becoming Shinsadong Tiger’s new dance music group. Since we’ve been starved of a successor to T-ara, quite frankly I am definitely excited about this development, especially since these types of songs generally hold up well for me no matter how derivative they might be. Hopefully they’ll branch out a bit going forward, but for now, the safe choice of dropping a familiarly lively and addicting song in “BAAM” ultimately results in a success.
