ITZY’s Loco
If you’ve followed ITZY since day one, you probably know GALACTIKA—the magic hand behind
some of ITZY’s biggest hits like DALLA DALLA and WANNABE, right? After he announced on
Instagram that LOCO would be the next big thing of ITZY, people were really expecting
something explosive that deserved their title Rookie Of The Year in 2020.
However, just a while after LOCO was released, things started to come clear to everyone that
all the expectations fell short and nothing of this song was like they’d imagined. On
social media, netizens started to talk about how LOCO was just a bland song that could
only attract attention for being sung by ITZY and the visually appealing MV. The song had
no highlights, no climaxes, no uniqueness and simply no nothing.
What’s even worse is that, some also believed LOCO was the song exposing everything ITZY’s
been trying to cover—the weak vocal capabilities. According to them, Lia’s still that member
who brings nothing to the table and with the other members’ low tone and average vocal
colors, they couldn’t vibe with LOCO as much as before.
On many domestic charts, the performance of LOCO was also seen to be sliding nonstop on
a slope. As reported by Kpop Charts on Twitter, LOCO debuted at just 41st on Genie and even
worse on MeLOn at 88th rank.
However, fans still had hopes because they believed LOCO was released at 1PM—a not-so-convenient
time in South Korea but super good in the States; international MIDZYs would soon get
on board and stream the song to higher positions. Sadly, that prediction was also shattered
into pieces because in the next several hours, though the ranking of LOCO did see some ups
in Melon, it still jumped between the top 50 and 60 despite the fact that the chart
has recently changed its rules to help songs increase their rank easier.
Even nine hours after that, LOCO still couldn’t get any further and just stopped at rank 52nd
on Genie and 46th on FLO. Actually, a netizen later updated that the song was soon dropped
to 54th on Genie—a rank that was even lower than BLACKPINK’s Lovesick Girls, just above
We Ride of Brave Girls and just two days after release, the song was dropped down to 78th,
officially becoming the lowest-charting song ever of ITZY.
Many netizens on Naver even claimed that the era of ITZY has gone and down the road, aespa
would for sure take the lead, STAYC would be right after and ITZY was of course ranked
third.
BTS’s Permission To Dance
Surprised? Though many ARMYs took pride in Permission To Dance as the first ever KPOP
song to be performed at the UN, there were also a great number of fans who found this
comeback nothing more than a milestone for them to become an ex-ARMY.
Again, I’m not exaggerating things and just telling you what’s been going on lately
in the music industry so I hope you don’t take this too personally or anything.
So, though it’s true that Permission To Dance was another bop of BTS and it even helped
them break the eleven-year-record of Katy Perry, many fans have started to question
the group’s direction and whether they were still seeing the same seven boys with whom
they first fell in love.
The disappointment grew so big that just with a quick Google search, you can already get
a bunch of results showing how Permission To Dance was such a pass that would slip through
your ears regardless of how many times the song is played on repeat. On Quora, there
are countless threads dedicated only to ranting about this song being a flop melody-wise and
lyrical-meaning-wise.
Take this thread titled “Is anyone else really disappointed with BTS' "Permission
to Dance" comeback?” for example. Just this alone has already had up to 59 answers, most
of which were all complaints, and right at the very first response, the OP had already
showed how the track was utterly disappointing with the excessive use of autotune and “laughably
stupid lyrics”. Not only that, the OP, as well as many other
users in the comment section, also agreed that Permission To Dance was nothing more
than a radio-song that lacked depth, uniqueness and the signature color of BTS. It’s so
generic that this could be the song of any mainstream Western pop artist.
Of course there were also opinions telling people to stop criticizing and saying Permission
To Dance was good enough because had BTS released another deep song like Black Swan, the public
wouldn’t have gotten into it either. However, this thing didn’t sit right with most people
there since they believe BTS could have harmonized the public taste and their signature vibe
to create some masterpieces like Save Me, Fake Love and DNA.
EXO’s Don’t Fight The Feelings
Besides BTS, the latest comeback of EXO also received negative reactions because according
to many fans, while this should be a huge bop with a bunch of bombastic elements to
mark the return of Xiumin, D.O, Lay, the comeback of EXO as a whole after eighteen months straight
and the departure of Baekhyun as well as Chanyeol prior to their enlistment, all they’ve ever
gotten was a forgettable, boring, overly short and underwhelming track.
Even the MV also failed most fans because the editing was done way too poorly and it
seemed like at this point, SM Entertainment just wanted to sabotage the group because
they now had more potential acts to take care of.
What’s even worse is that, while the company promised to release two different photo books
with one model featuring six different covers, they ended up changing six versions to one
due to the manufacturer’s circumstances. That’s also why though EXO-Ls really wanted
the boys to have good memories before another long hiatus, they couldn’t help but trending
the hashtag #EXO_DESERVED_RESPECT and made a fuss over the negligence of SM Entertainment.
NCT’s Sticker
Coming back after around one year of hiatus, it’s beyond happiness for NCT 127 that they
reaped multiple achievements with STICKER, got all-kills on music shows and even had
double-million pre-orders for the album sales. Basically, achievement-wise, the results were
more than satisfactory for them.
However, when it came to the quality, meaning, and melody, opinions are heavily divided since
while many defended this was how NCT’s music led the trend, others believed SM Entertainment
was just taking advantage of fans by releasing bad music and telling only those who got on
board with STICKER were truly NCTzens.
Apparently, SM Entertainment is the house of experimental music and you can easily see
that with many songs of Red Velvet or aespa, but netizens on theqoo still couldn’t get
into STICKER for its being too experimental, too noisy that they couldn’t make out what
the lyrics were, and had it not been for the flute sound, they could have grown into the
song way easier.
However, that’s not all the reasons this comeback was controversial because as observed
by many fans, the center position of Taeyong was also stolen and the alleged villain here
was no one other than Jaehyun.
The OP even pointed out that the shift was done in secret to not attract too much negative
reaction because in this picture, NCT was implicitly forming around Jaehyun and even
for the MV of Lemonade, he also had the most screen time out of all members.
Though the OP seemed kinda salty about this shift in position, most people agreed that
Jaehyun was by no means at fault and considering his overwhelming popularity both onshore and
offshore, the move of SM was totally understandable. Of course there might be some other fans who
weren't happy about this power transition but at the end of the day, SM’s still just
a company and we can’t blame them for grasping a big chance of making more money.
Apink’s I’m So Sick
Though this era of Apink didn’t receive much criticism toward big things like song
quality or changes in positions, I’m So Sick in general was still a controversial
comeback with lots of hate pointing at how Naeun and Namjoo looked way too weird with
their alleged plastic surgery obsessions.
Of course all these things just stemmed from the good intention to serve fans with better
visuals but according to netizens, they not only looked awkward but also like transgenders.
Plus, since the groups had lost their heat compared to the previous time, some suspected
that the “plastic monster” faces were for sure an attention bait from the agency.
So, do you think people were overreacting or these comebacks were indeed disappointing?
Comment down below to share your thoughts with us. Also, don’t forget to like, share,
and subscribe to BeBossTV for more interesting content. Thank you for watching!