Once more into Spotify and YouTube dear friends, once more. JK we’re doing twenty-three more after this. But it’s Friday! Yay! Hopefully your 2021 life is one that allows enough differentiation between days to make Friday still a pleasant concept. If not, my heart goes out to you. Maybe some K-pop will help? Today we’re onto Loona. Sit back, get ready for whatever your conceptualisation of a weekend is, and enjoy.
Who are Loona?
Hooh boy, if you thought IZ*ONE had a complex origin story, buckle up. Loona is a twelve-member girl group formed by Blockberry Creative, another company I have never heard of, who debuted, kind of, in 2016. I say kind of, because the debuting process for Loona was a little more complicated than usual. As illustrated by the group’s Korean name, 이달의 소, or ‘Girl of the Month’, each individual member was debuted separately and periodically over the course of eighteen months. Every new member got their own promotional single, and as the members were being revealed, three sub-units (group within a group, not sure if it’s a thing outside K-pop) were created that also released their own work. The total group eventually released a single altogether in August 2018, and since then has existed and released music with all twelve members. Keeping up? It is the kind of complicated concept that K-pop loves to experiment with, though I like the idea of every member in a group as big as this getting a single where they can be the centre of attention.
Their style is listed on Spotify as “energetic pop” influenced by 90’s R & B, hip hop and EDM. This is a tantalising prospect, particularly as it suggests we will be away from high-pitched vocal affectations that, as saw yesterday, I just can’t gel with. Fingers crossed.
The First Song
Well this is up for debate, as, like I said, the group each had their own individual promotional singles, three sub-units released their own work, and THEN they debuted as a twelve-piece. This could be interpreted as creating sixteen debut singles, and I do not have the energy to go through all of that right now. I am compromising by listening to one of each sub-unit’s first songs, along with the whole group’s debut. I feel like that’s decent enough.
Therefore, the song I picked from sub-unit one (god this is dangerously close to maths) is Loona 1/3’s Love&Live from 2017. It’s fun and energetic, with a pretty standard school setting and outfits to match. You can kind of tell that this is the oldest of all Loona’s output, from the colour palette of the video to the vocal stylings. Here we aren’t that far away from what Weki Meki or GFriend was doing at the same time. Much as sub-unit three (yyxy)’s love4eva is a full year later (and features Grimes!), the tone is actually pretty similar here: energetic, young girls singing about love, school uniforms, you know how it goes. I do love the Clueless yellow outfits though. It’s the second sub-unit, Loona Odd Eye Circle (I don’t know either), whose song Girl Front, has a more carefree, slightly more mature style, with a much more memorable and playful central melody.
However, it’s the full, twelve-member Loona, who deliver my favourite debut. 2018’s Favourite moves away from the typical synthy, EDM sound of so much third/fourth gen K-pop, to something that sounds almost 90’s hip hop or R & B. The video is also notably simple, with all the members in one outfit, I guess to bring attention to their unity as a new twelve-piece. This song got me more interested than any of the sub-unit debuts, and I hoped I would hear a furthering of this sound, rather than the more generic Love&Live or love4eva style.
Five of the Big Hits
OK, so as I was so committed and dedicated that I reviewed FOUR songs in a one-song category, I cut down this section to four songs. If you’re wondering if that logic really works, then I simply say shush go away you’re ruining my fun. I chose So What, HI High (this song, upon research, is kind of also their twelve-member debut. It’s complicated, I got confused), Why Not and of course, the only Loona song I could name before doing this, Butterfly.
And, um, WOW. These songs pretty much all blew me away. HI High was the least impressive of the four, but still an incredibly slick, high-production version of the smiley bouncefest every girl group must give us at least once. Butterfly I had already seen, and the wonderfully high and delicate melody of the chorus’s ‘fly like a butterfly’ was enough to charm. The visuals of the video are, again, super slick and have a really strongly cultivated aesthetic. Seeing the twelve girls dancing so cleanly in all black is minimalism done right, as is the rest of this song. Also, in this video, as well as So What, there are women featured who aren’t Loona, as other characters in the video. Not backing dancers, other characters. I have not seen this a lot in K-pop, so props for that. So What is a song that does the bad girl/girl crush concept right: I am willing to overlook the irony of women whose lives are highly controlled by companies formed mostly of men, telling them what to do in almost every aspect, proclaiming that they don’t care and do what they want, when the song is this good. A steady rhythmic build and energetic synths combine with the simple “I’m so bad” refrain to make exactly the kind of hair-shaking bop I just love. Why Not is another solid gold banger with less of a ‘big’ sound, and a chorus that simply repeats a nonsense ‘dum di dum’ melody to a tight beat. This might sound like the kind of affectation I previously disliked in other groups, but I just don’t have the skills to describe exactly how this song pulls it off so well. Great production and performance is definitely a big part of it. Also the video has two members dancing in suits in black and white, which I will always support. All of these songs completely won me over. I’m going to have to look up the name for this fandom.
The Latest Song
That would be late 2020’s English language Star. Even this got confusing for me, as the Korean version title translates as Voice. Never mind, the song is still great. It’s not quite on the level of So What or Why Not, but it taps into that fast-paced eighties-style that we saw in Everglow’s La Di Da the same year, or maybe even The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights. The kind of song you could wear neon and choreograph a mirror routine to.
The Latest Album
This is, by far, the strongest album I have listened to as part of this project so far. It’s 2020’s 12:00, and features the singles Star (here the Korean version, Voice) and Why Not, so we’re already off to a good start. I’m not sure if I can put my finger on a specific quality that I really like here; it isn’t a specific voice, rap style or even melody. I think it’s just that these songs are so damn well done, with clean production and smart arrangements to really show the group off. Fall Again for example, a 90’s flavoured slow jam, wouldn’t normally work for me, but here it’s just put together in an interesting enough way to make me really enjoy it. Hide & Seek is more straightforward K-pop peppy energy, but again, it’s reminiscent of Itzy’s Dalla Dalla in terms of just how much fun it is. Oops enjoys playing with rap and brassy hooks for the ‘bad girl’ vibe, like So What’s little sister. The entire album is fun, over too soon and absolutely makes me want to listen to more.
Thoughts?
My god I absolutely loved Loona. This was the most fun group exploration/review type thing I’ve done thus far, and I will definitely be listening to more of their work in the hope it all hits heights as high as what I’ve already heard. Leaning into the more ‘attitudey’ side of K-pop girl groups and away from cutesiness will always be a winner for me, so maybe I have a bias here. But I don’t really care. Loona's music is high quality, with a nice amount of diversity in styles that probably comes from their original concept of different groups coming together into one. Their fandom name is Orbit, and you may well be witnessing a new one being born. I think….I think I might stan Loona.
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