#47: SISTAR - Shady Girl

Oh yes, the girl group I dissed earlier this year for bringing out the mistake that was Push Push and tormenting me every week, 3 times a week, for a little over a month, made it on my best of list. Has hell frozen over? Of course not.


I won't say that I don't like the song, because that would be an outright lie, nor will I say that I think all 4 of the girls have talent, because I would be lying again, but I will say that they caught some of my interest with this single, which actually isn't half bad.

If you look at it in the most unbiased way, completely forgetting that Push Push even exists, it's probably one of the better-done non-big 3 girl group songs this year. I'm talking about the song here, we haven't gotten into their vocals yet. So anyway, it's a well-done song - a nice, melodic yet catchy melody, a cute instrumental with sparkles and all and your regulation k-pop arrangement. All in all it's a nice song, and if it weren't for what I'm gonna talk about in a while, would've placed higher on this list.

You know what ruins it? The delivery. On recordings it's perfectly fine, the girls are decent singers, one of them rather good, but I'm sorry to say that that's probably the last compliment they'll get from me, for their vocals. You watch the girls and there's absolutely no finesse to their performance, it's literally like they were told to jump on stage the minute the song started. Not nice.

So what does the performance have to do with the actual song? Performances are meant to promote the song, they're meant to get people to buy the album and follow that artist forever, if possible. If I had watched the performance before I heard the song, I would've never bothered to listen to it because no matter how OK the song is, if the delivery sucks, the delivery sucks. I know I'll probably contradict myself in the future for this, but in majority of kpop, the weekly live performance is just as important as the song, and if you can't sell that, you won't sell the song.