K-pop Goes February: Day 18- T-ara

Hello chums! I hate the word chums but fuck it it’s Thursday. Chummy Thursday. Just made that a thing. We’re fully into our Second Generation Week now, and today we continue down the girl group road (not a thing). Guys, gals, gays and theys, I give you, T-ara.

Who are T-ara?

Ah, the confusing K-pop group name pronunciation demon rises its head again. I was fully saying ‘Tara’, you know, like the girl’s name, the whole time. I clearly haven’t learnt anything during this project. The hyphen means it’s pronounced ‘tiara’ Sarah, GOD. So there you go. T-ara are a girl group who debuted in 2009 under MBK Entertainment. And yes, no idea who MBK Entertainment are, you’re getting the hang of this. Normally, I state the number of members a group has, and for the most part, what I can discern is that this group has mainly had six. But ho boy has there been some shuffling around. Prior to debut they had five members, but two left, then another three were added. A year later they added another, and in 2012 two more followed, though one of them only seemed to appear in one video. In 2012, the member who had joined in 2010 (Hwayoung) swiftly left, amid rumours of bullying by the members. A few years later, in 2017, it was publicly revealed that Hwayoung had actually behaved poorly herself, and had been playing the victim when she was actually the aggressor. Blimey. Two more members left when their contracts ended in 2017, and the future of the group is currently in limbo, as the remaining four have left MBK Entertainment, but have not apparently disbanded. So far, this seems like a GCSE maths question to which I do not know the answer, so like I say, let’s generally say six.

Their music is described on Wikipedia as “hook heavy dance-pop”, which is pretty all encompassing when it comes to K-pop, but still could mean a lack of cutesiness, which I always like. I just hope the music isn’t as confusing as it was trying to figure out who’s actually in the group.

The First Song

Whilst a pre-debut group version of T-ara did release a song in April 2009 (Good Person) for a soundtrack, I don’t want to get into Loona levels of multiple debuts here, so I’ll just look at their official first song, Lies, from July of that year. For some reason there are two versions of this song, and listening to them both on Spotify, it…doesn’t sound like there’s much of a difference. It’s certainly a very old-fashioned pop song, a small, eighties-electro backed piece, with an admittedly catchy hook of “거짓말” (‘geo ji mal’- lies) studding the chorus. I really cannot distinguish any difference between these two different ‘parts’ that were released, so I have to assume it’s different lyrics in each song. It isn’t an interesting song to me at all, though I enjoyed the very low-budget looking video of each member realising the same guy is two-timing them with the others. They wear some nice black and white themed outfits for the dance section. That is all.

Five of the Big Hits

Again I took to Reddit here, the home of people who know more about K-pop than me but aren’t scary about it. I decided to take their suggestions of Bo Peep Bo Peep, Roly Poly, Lovey Dovey, You Drive Me Crazy and Sugar Free.

I started with Bo Peep Bo Peep, which entertainingly starts with that computer automatic voice from the eighties saying “don’t lose your temper so quickly”. The video was honestly distracting me from the song, with the plot of a woman seducing a man in a club, taking him to some kind of hotel room, and apparently turning into some kind of giant cat just as they are banging. It’s implied that she kills or eats him and then goes back out to find the next victim. Like, OK then. The song itself is standard eighties-esque rhythmic electronica, with the title pulsing through the chorus almost more like an extra beat than a song. Lovey Dovey is another song in the same mould, with a similarly odd video. Here the backing synths are much more ‘arcade game’ in style, and again the title comes in a surprisingly fast babble during the chorus. I think the song is aiming at a slightly spooky element through its verse peppering of ‘ooh oohs’, in the manner of someone intimidating a lame ghost. However, my main theory for this comes from the video, which sees the girls performing the song’s dance in a nightclub that quickly becomes infected with the world’s crappest zombies. It’s very obviously a nod to Thriller, with the girls donning sparkly-cuffed black trousers and moonwalking at one point. Also, a character is taken off to ‘safety’ by a man at the end, only to turn around and give a suggestive stare. You know, exactly like in Thriller. I wish the song had been more similar in style to be honest.

The next video I watched was for Roly Poly, and Jesus did I click on the wrong thing or did no one ever give these girls a budget? They are dancing in various school uniforms, in a school, for most of the video. Where are the sparkly trouser cuffs? This song is also reliant on a chorus that quickly repeats the song to make the central hook, and here it’s pretty cutesy in style. Not my thing. Again, I’m getting strong eighties vibes from the instrumentation, all controlled, mechanic synths and gentle keyboards. The violins in the bridge are a nice touch though.

It’s in Sugar Free and You Drive Me Crazy that really stand out for me. Both of these songs seem to hit a different element of gay music culture: the former echoing hardcore EDM to an almost Eurotrash extent, and the latter hitting the Britney Spears/Pussycat Dolls sass level of Womanizer or Buttons. Sugar Free opens with those wonderful toppling synths of 2000s Europop, and then flirts with the rhythms and pulsing baselines of early Swedish House Mafia. I love just how Eurovision the chorus sounds, and how relentless the whole thing is. In You Drive Me Crazy, the girls are at their most overtly sexy in the video, showing way more fire than I saw from Girls’ Generation yesterday. The song opens with a school playground style melody, taunting and cheeky. We are then treated to autotune, and playful ‘ohs’ being pinged backwards and forwards to welcome the chorus. The vocal stylings, deliberately mixing the cocky and coy, are so Britney in the Womanizer/If You Seek Amy eras that it hurts. Except it doesn’t hurt because it’s brilliant. I can fully imagine both of these songs going down a storm in a gay bar, if anyone’s ever allowed in one again.

The Latest Song

The last release before T-ara effectively went on hiatus at the end of 2017 is June’s What’s My Name. And unfortunately, this song seems to fall into the trend of a second gen group changing their sound to modernise, and losing all character in the process (hi SHINee, hi Infinite). It’s an almost trancey EDM style track, with potential to utilise interesting hooks, or a catchy melody, or a sense of scale in the production. And it just…doesn’t. After listening to their back catalogue, I was expecting a hook, and a sound that couldn’t be ignored. Or at least a dance routine. Instead, I already can’t really remember it, and the most notable thing that happened in the video was one member sadly playing with some toast. Maybe it would grow on me with more listens, but I don’t know if I want to give it that.

The Latest Album

Ah, scratch that. The latest EP from T-ara was 2017’s What’s My Name, so I don’t think I’m going to get away with hearing that song just once. Especially when the track listing has a Chinese version and an instrumental. Blast.

This EP was the last that the group created as a six-member entity, and was originally released in separate group song and solo song formats. But you know my dedication: I listened to the one combining them both. What’s My Name is slightly more interesting on a second listen: the bouncy synth in the chorus is quite fun, I guess. The following track, Reload, was more interesting, adding in flourishes of violins, sax and funky bass guitars to create a snappier, almost nineties-sounding tune. The softness of the refrain of ‘reload’ in the chorus harkened back to the group’s hook heavy heights, as did the repeated line of ‘what you see is what you get’, underlying the funky side of this track. The following song, the impressively uncatchily named 20090729 (presumably a date of importance, gonna guess their debut date) is a ballad, and one that works about 50% of the time for me. The quieter, calmer moments, without the heavier production to offset the balance, allowed the members’ emotive, delicate vocals to really come through. The other half of the time it unfortunately felt like every other K-pop ballad I’ve ever heard, but half is still something.

My two favourites on this album, however, were solos (all of the above were group members). Ooh La La had fun with its central concept, all bouncy beats, whispering backing vocals and melodies climbing in the chorus. The backing rhythm almost felt like it was handclapped at points, giving the song a communal dance feel, as though it’s being sung live at a buzzing venue. But my standout favourite was Diamond (다이아몬드), a solo from member Qri. This song is truly unique, taking a slow, relaxed beat, adding clicks, swaying backing vocals, and gorgeous harmonies for the chorus of ‘diamonds only’. This song stays controlled in its minimalism, and I love it for it. Other tracks on the album, namely the solos Real Love and Lullaby, completely pass me by, but Diamond is going to stay with me.

Thoughts?

Wow, OK, T-ara are interesting. In their heyday, the keyword was definitely ‘hook’. I admire the confidence to lean this heavily on what could be considered a gimmicky element of music, because when it works, it works hard. Sugar Free was iconic, and as much as I don’t really know how to take Bo Peep Bo Peep, Roly Poly or Lovey Dovey, there’s no denying they leave an impression. It’s a shame that they seem to have lost this in their later work, or at least what they chose to lead it. Ooh La La and Diamond (ugh, I REALLY loved Diamond) show that they could have given the K-pop scene something really interesting, and I don’t know why they didn’t. Girls’ Generation showed yesterday that you can retain your essential style and still update for later phases of K-pop, so why didn’t T-ara do it? Are they scared that the hook heavy electronic dance-pop style won’t work? Girls, that’s like, two thirds of K-pop today! You made that! You can still do it!