Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After DSP Media gave Rainbow enough time off to let Jisook and Jaekyung team up to work on nuclear fusion in China (probably), they are finally fucking back with “WHOO“.
The “WHOO!” parts at the start of the track immediately reminded me of HyunA‘s “Bubble Pop“, which was an extremely effective way to hook my interest immediately. The instrumental was promising, but ultimately didn’t go as strong as I thought it was going to be. Related to that was the reality that the pre-chorus was a bit dull, especially in the sense that I feared it was the hook, but thankfully they reverted back to the intro “WHOO!” and “CLAP CLAP!” stuff. I doubt that chorus will hook people immediately, but I feel like it will end up likely being more memorable than people think as it gets played over and over.
The rap verse was handled surprisingly well and met the minimum requirements of not ruining the song, but I think the bridge needed to be better in order for “WHOO” to not fall into the “flat” label that many give these 80s tracks. That’s not my take on it, though, and I especially enjoyed the pared down ending with the piano featuring heavily.
Ultimately, this actually reminded me of one of those fun closing songs for a musical. One can read into that whichever way they want, but I thought despite the flaws, “WHOO” was fun and will likely hold up better over time than most initially believe.
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The music video and its literal Rainbow color pallet was amazing, and the girls almost universally looked good.
Credit should go to the director, stylist, and whoever the hell else was involved in this for making what was essentially a cheap-ass music video appear intentionally conceptualized that way by squeezing quality out of every dollar spent.
In particular, though, Woori looked fucking ridiculous…
…and I want her to murder me.
My criticism is this: for a fun and lively song like “WHOO”, I really think they needed to work in either more “fun” shots or some type of outdoor shots somehow. The pillow fight stuff was a start, but it needed more of that because most of the environments throughout were sterile as fuck.
Still, that’s probably more on DSP Media being broke-ass even after killing KARA for this, and it’s hard to complain about something that was entertaining in the end.
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All that said (besides the Asian Junkie Curse meme), my concerns from the teaser persist in that it’s still not a particularly attention-grabbing music video, and the 80s throwback musical feel generally seems to flop in Korea no matter how well executed. Thus, despite my overall positive takeaway from “WHOO”, I have to wonder if this is gonna be the score they needed or if what people really wanted was something more like “A“.
