Tune Overview: Stray Children – Ceremony

Over time, Stray Children have grown into one among Ok-pop’s premiere teams. In truth, their reputation is so international that it nearly feels as in the event that they’ve transcended the business altogether. As soon as upon a time, additionally they topped my year-end singles chart. Gosh, that looks like lifetimes in the past. The group is again right this moment with their fourth Korean full-length album and the appropriately-titled Ceremony. In spite of everything, this feels very very similar to a victory lap.

Sure, it’s one other Ok-pop tune about how nice and in style its performers. By now, you all understand how drained and unappealing I discover this lyrical trope, however even probably the most overused themes could be salvaged by killer songwriting and compelling manufacturing. Stray Children have proven they’re able to each previously, however oftentimes their must be catchy and intelligent in a sloganeering method will get them into bother. A lot of Ceremony seems like a meme, from the repeated “hip hip hooray” to the (annoying) “we’ve obtained good karma” catchphrase. There are enjoyable moments buried throughout the tune, however they’re about as quick as the eye span wanted to get pleasure from a humorous web joke.

Trying on the positives, Ceremony‘s woozy manufacturing is fairly fascinating. It retains the listener off stability all through and the percussion through the verses has an addictive texture I haven’t heard a lot of in Ok-pop. I want I might fuse it to a unique tune fully, as a result of a lot of Ceremony is solely repeated retorts flowing via the identical hip-hop phrasing we’ve heard again and again these previous few years. The refrain is sort of limp, centered round a feeble beat drop and a few errant shouting. There’s no melodic point of interest to tug every thing collectively the way in which S-Class‘s pre-chorus did a pair years in the past. Trying again at an excellent older touchstone, it’s as if Ceremony took probably the most polarizing components of Bigbang’s Bang Bang Bang (ie: its iconic entice refrain) and tried to construct a whole tune round it. It’s an ear-catching experiment, however not one which works for me. Worse but, I worry its extra gimmicky moments will age poorly.

Grade: C