[#27] After School - "Lady Luck"

From: "Lady Luck / Dilly Dally"
Format: Single
Released: June
Territory: Japan
Previous Best of Appearances: "Because of You" (2009) / #18 - "Bang!" (2010) / #17 - "Bang!" (2011) / #37 - "Play Ur Love" (2011)

As many of you know, After School is one of those groups that I really, genuinely, want to like, but there are always factors, whether internal or external, that prevent me from it. One of those many factors is the fact that their material has kind of been all over the place lately. They started out as this sexy-fierce-fun girl group, and have slowly progressed into… something else. What exactly that something else is, even I don’t know -- their identity is kind of a mess of different things right now.

“Lady Luck” is part of that mess, I’m afraid. But honestly, out of all the things After School has attempted that wasn’t part of their initial direction -- full-on cute, subdued feminine, sexy but with vocals of a five year-old, etc. -- this is the sound I’m actually the most okay with.

The song is feminine, yes, and it’s very fragile, with very flat, Japanese production, but the individual elements, and even how they come together, give the song this flirty, fun sound. It’s not the “I am a strong, independent woman (and I don’t need men)” kind of song, but at the same time, it’s not the ridiculously, sickening cute where they all have to dress up, and sound, like five year-olds. It sounds like something they’d play at the beginning of a chick flick that's set to a montage of the main girls dressing up or shopping or doing stuff girls in chick flicks do.

And that's okay, because at least the sound is very clear and very cleanly executed -- it's not confused or anything like "Flashback". I like how they took the cuteness of the vocals of the new members and instead of cheapening the whole thing, treated them in such a way that there would still be some hint of that cuteness, but that the femininity was the quality that really stood out.

But I guess that sold the song to me at the end of everything was the fact that the melody is not only gorgeous, but it also really matches the sound. It's gorgeous, it's fun and really is flirty, and it's clear about it -- confidence needs clarity too, and "Lady Luck" has both.