Album Review – Wonder Girls “Reboot”
It’s time for more Kpopalypse album reviews – this time Kpopalypse is taking a look at “Reboot” by Wonder Girls!
It’s time to get old-school again with Kpopalypse album reviews! There’s definitely some newer albums that I’m planning on covering this year, but I’m still in “clearing the A-list backlog” mode for at least a little while longer!
Wonder Girls – Reboot
“Reboot” was the third and final full length album by JYP Entertainment girl group Wonder Girls and was released in 2015. Promotions for the album caused a buzz by showing the dormant idol dance group not only revived but reconfigured as an instrument-playing pop group (a reversal of then-popular AOA’s trajectory at the time), and teaser footage notably included the girls playing (heavily edited) solos on their instruments of choice. Also of note was the group’s strikingly manufactured image, seemingly modelled around the all-female-model backing band in the video for US singer Robert Palmer’s 1980s hit “Addicted To Love“. People wondered if this reconfiguration of Wonder Girls even qualified them as a real instrument-playing group, and the answer was…. kind of. Like Robert Palmer’s models, Wonder Girls did not actually play any of their own instruments on the recording, and only Yeeun (on keys) was beyond intermediate level as a player at the time, but they did learn their instruments well enough to do some live performances for album promotions. Each of the girls also had a hand in co-writing every track on the album except the feature, although for the most part it’s not known to what extent. The album itself reflects the retro-inspired theme with a heavy 80s synthpop sound on many tracks, making this a “concept album” of sorts, at least sonically.
1. Baby Don’t Play
The first track on any k-pop album is almost always the best track, and “Baby Don’t Play” is no exception, starting off the album with a big synth-pop bang, leaning hard on exactly the kind of lush sound you’re probably expecting from looking at the cover art. Keys, bass and drums all have a similar heavily-synthesised tone, with only the funk guitar sounding relatively organic. It’s obvious that much of what’s here is pre-programmed synths rather than live playing, and in that sense “Baby Don’t Play” definitely sets the tone for the rest of the album. The song has a seriously hooky chorus, some neat chord progressions that are unmatched anywhere else on the album and it’s a great mid-paced opener as well as one of the better Wonder Girls tracks in general.
2. Candle (ft. Paloalto)
More really cool synth sounds and vocal melodies, with some excellent electro-bass and keyboard riffing carrying the song more so than any of the singing. The effect of the instruments here is sadly dulled by relatively uninteresting verses and several rap sections (from both Paloalto and the Wonder Girls themselves… wait, what is Paloalto even doing here? Who invited him? For what purpose?) that dilute some of the appeal. Nevertheless it’s still a good track despite these weaknesses and keeps much of the same sonic signature of the album opener.
3. I Feel You
Big Van Halen style keyboards introduce the song’s flagship track (which is oddly the only song title also printed on the album cover) and at least in terms of nailing the production to the concept, “I Feel You” is the album’s shining moment. The only song on the album written and produced by JYP himself, his flair for this style of production shines through, and it’s a shame that he didn’t use this sound on more songs throughout his career for both himself and others. Having said that it’s melodically not as strong a song as “Baby Don’t Play” with the vocal melodies devolving a bit into R&B territory which doesn’t quite suit the straightforward energy of the backing track. “I Feel You” was the only song from the album to receive a music video, although Wonder Girls did actually promote many of this album’s other songs on Korean TV stages.
4. Rewind
One of many retro-referencing song titles, “Rewind” is a mid-paced track with atmospheric ballad vibes that quickly vanish. The smooth vocals and keys here are placed somewhat at odds with the hard-compressed 80s synth drumming and the result is just a little odd. This feeling grows more in the chorus when the syncopated bass comes in to double the drum rhythms and lends some extra punch, making the rhythms better but also rubbing up against the laid back “sultry” (or whatever) vocal approach even harder. Probably a song that would have been more effective with either a softer or tougher sound (but not both at once),”Rewind” still works overall but it’s not one of the album’s stronger songs.
5. Loved
“Loved” starts by going crazy with the 80s handclaps, but after a few seconds you can barely even hear them over the layers of synth and that chunky hard-gated snare drum. The song is mainly driven by some fairly average rapping in the verses which doesn’t work that well against the mushy reverb on the instruments and the endless layers of sound. A decent chorus and a very good instrumental breakdown both serve the backing track much better, and there’s some great playing here overall as the song winds on, but it’s far from the best song here.
6. John Doe
An oddly crap song title belies one of the album’s better tracks. “John Doe” breaks slightly from the sonic theme with its frequent brass stabs that don’t really sound like anything else on the album so far. Subtle but cool keyboard and guitar work also really helps this song out, and it’s good that they toned down the snare drum a bit for this track to give everything else a chance to breathe. I think the producers of this album read that one story about Phil Collins’ snare drum sound and just got a bit overenthusiastic in places. “John Doe” feels just a bit less leaden thanks to just some slight production restraint, which helps it significantly.
7. One Black Night
Out of all the songs on this album that the “why don’t you review album tracks Kpopalypse you asshole” people kept harassing me about, “One Black Night” was the one that they campaigned for the hardest. I hope those people are reading now 11 years later and are happy that they finally got their review. I’m tempted to not say anything about this album and talk about something irrelevant now just to fuck with them further but I’ve had my decade of toying with them so I’ll tell you what I think because I’m so nice like that, and weirdly, people give a shit (yeah, I don’t know why either). “One Black Night” is a banger that leans into the SAW sound a bit with the ostinato bass and the rapping/talking sections here are the only ones on the entire album that are actually effective, it’s the album’s second-best song after the opener.
8. Back
Well, there goes the concept, we’re into the “fuck it” stage of the album now. Wonder Girls throw the 80s synthpop theme completely out the window for this track which is more of a circa-1990 rap track, along with everything you’d expect from that style. The breakbeats and dry production is all here, all that’s missing is the random screechy looping noise in the background and a sample of Flavor Flav going “yeaaaah boizzzzz” (hey if it’s good enough for DIA…). It’s not bad but it has nothing in common with anything that came before it and feels like it belongs on a different album. “Back” is also the only song on the album which is (if the songwriting credits are to be believed) completely written lyrically and musically by the girls themselves and nobody else (all except Yeeun were involved here) and.. well I guess they didn’t know how to write an 80s synthpop song to keep in with the theme, so they didn’t bother. Fair enough I suppose, but I have to wonder what it’s even doing here, besides collecting royalties.
9. Oppa
Another track that feels out of place completely, at least at first, “Oppa” experiments with a few different rhythmic feels in the verses over the various rapping parts, and none of it is all that bad… or all that great, either. The song quickly improves when the chorus appears and the heavier synth feel of earlier tracks is redeployed, but it’s not quite enough to make this song a success because there’s not that much in the way of interesting melody here. One of the weirdest breakdowns in Wonder Girls’ career also makes the track stumble a bit. Overall “Oppa” is not a bad song but certainly one that definitely doesn’t feel like it completely fits together, either in context of the album or in isolation.
10. Faded Love
A puzzling fade-in intro gives way to some pretty nice keyboard riffs, but that’s the best thing about “Faded Love”, which is melodically bland once it gets going. Decent instrumentation all the way through and a nice shuffling groove still manages to pull this song over the quality line, but you pretty much have to ignore everything happening vocally to get any juice out of this one. At this point the album doesn’t seem to be worrying about having a consistent sound anymore, but “Faded Love” isn’t a bad listen anyway, if just a little uninteresting.
11. Gone
A slow synth jam with dull synthetic drums and some extremely odd sonic choices, but they’re buried way back in the layers of vocal and synth to the point where you might not notice anything’s all that odd at first. Just wait – as the song drags on weird “wrong notes” punch through from time to time with increasing frequency, usually when one of the girls is trying to do some screechy high vocal part at the same time. The song culminates with a truly horrendous vocal breakdown “climax” of pure undiluted unlistenability that is so pathetic that it has to be heard to be believed. Absolutely the worst song on the album, you’ll be “gone” yourself long before it’s over if you have any music taste left.
12. Remember
It’s not a k-pop song without a dogshit ballad for morons on it somewhere, and “Remember” is that song on Reboot. Characterless and boring, this ballad says “fuck you” to the established album concept and just goes through exactly the same tired, cliched, ballad-songwriting-for-dummies motions as every other k-pop b-side ballad you’ve ever heard, ever. A true stinker to end the album on and to remind readers that even the best k-pop albums still contain garbage like this, it’s still a better song than “Gone” because while being bland, boring, conservative, dreary and unimaginative, at least it’s physically listenable. Puzzlingly, it was written by the same songwriter as the album’s great opening track “Baby Don’t Play”, so who the fuck knows what happened there.
FINAL THOUGHTS
“Reboot” was critically acclaimed when it came out, and is still highly regarded as a k-pop album to this day, and rightly so. The songs are mostly good, some are excellent, the musical approach is unusually consistent for a k-pop album, and all the crap is sensibly buried right at the end so you can just turn the thing off once you’ve had your fill of quality music in the album’s first two-thirds. The sonic signature of the album is meaningful and was way ahead of the curve for the time it was released – synthpop didn’t really start trending hard in k-pop until the early 2020s. The “band” concept however is more of a marketing gimmick, but it’s still a marketing gimmick that worked well at the time and one that I’d like to see k-pop try a little bit more of, because endless girl idol dance groups does get a bit boring. Mind you, given that the synthpop trend is slowly petering out and girl bands in k-pop are now less of a novelty than they once were thanks to the likes of QWER gaining the commercial relevance that AOA as a band never managed, we’re probably not going to see a big agency try another album like Reboot anytime soon, if ever. That alone makes this album a strange anomaly that’s worth investigating, regardless of whatever you might have ever thought about JYP or the Wonder Girls themselves.
That’s it for this post! Kpopalypse will return!
