SHINee - Hello (3 new tracks)

When I found out that the new SHINee tracks were out, I was practically tripping over myself trying to scramble home as fast as I could - I even considered skipping fro-yo for them! Let's just say that I didn't skip fro-yo, and I'm glad I didn't.


I like SHINee, I like them a lot, and right now Lucifer is one of the few frontrunners for my favorite song of the year. Lucifer (the album) is outstanding, and even if SHINee have managed to deliver superior material compared to all the other boybands in their "league", they have set the standards so high for themselves that Hello just pales in comparison, in more ways than one.

The production is strong, the vocals fantastic and the melody pretty - that's about all the song can offer and for a band like SHINee, that's simply not enough.

I like the arrangement and I'll be honest with you - the melody made me smile - but we've heard this all before, it's nothing new, nothing ground-breaking, and it most definitely won't start a trend. They're now past the stage wherein they have to cement themselves as talented singers and/or a band with outstanding material, this is the time to possibly revolutionize k-pop - and they most definitely didn't do it.

One is absolutely no match for Life or Obsession - the chorus is a surprise given the verses, which I appreciate, and you know I'm a sucker for a good string section, but this didn't give me goosebumps. I don't know if it's because their vocals lack emotion, or because the song itself is a little on the boring side, but it's most definitely not up to par with the other ballads.

And finally, we have the disaster of all disasters. I just don't get Get It. (OK I didn't mean for that to sound like a pun.) It's... yeah. Even I'm confused. It's like Britney with a bit of BoA and where have I heard those specific synths before? UGH. It's too slow and there isn't enough kick to the song that it doesn't make an impact, and then they just had to go and autotune the vocals. The song has no melody, no clear structure, and it's a mess of random parts of different songs thrown together with no thought or effort put into it.

Now I'm seriously thinking if I should wait for this version to hit Philippine record stores, or just buy version A, that's already out here. If all I'm getting in addition to the 13 fantastic tracks are three sub-par ones, I just might not wait for this new one to come out here.

For the three tracks - 4.1/5. Better than others, but not up to their own standards.