[#49] Stephanie - "GAME"

From: "The New Beginning"
Format: Single
Released: October
Territory: South Korea
Previous Best of Appearances: First Appearance

My favorite girl group, even if I don't follow them as much as I follow DBSK, has always been CSJH. That was an easy decision to make, because all four of them can sing well, and I liked majority of their material in Korea and Japan, but I wish I could say that it was just as easy to pick a favorite voice. I found it even harder to pinpoint my favorite voice in CSJH than in DBSK, because even if I favored Lina and Stephanie didn't like Sunday and Dana's voices at first, CSJH's material really showed off their strong points. Even now, I genuinely think all four of them are talented singers, but if I really, really had to choose, I'd choose Stephanie.

I'd choose Stephanie because beyond having a gorgeous voice and a deep but feminine timbre, she knows how to carry it very, very well. "GAME" is the perfect example of that.

Delivery is one of the most important parts of a song, because so much of the final package depends on it. But for the exact same reason, on a lot of songs it's also the part that goes wrong, or the part that just doesn't match the level of all the other elements. You can have the most beautiful melody, the most cohesive and dynamic arrangement and the best production, but those will all go down the drain if the song goes to a singer whose ability to deliver doesn't do all those justice. It's like how a novel can have the best plot and the most interesting characters, but if the author can't translate that into a well-developed, comprehensive narrative, that great plot and those characters will fall apart.

Sure, "GAME" is so Eurotrash it hurts, but Stephanie has both the talent and the ability to carry it well. She doesn't just match the song, she turns what could have been a flat, emotionless song song into a melodic, confident and ear-catching one. Really, my breath stopped when I heard the bridge for the first time on the teaser -- it's a pretty melody, but had someone lesser sang it would've lost one dimension, the one dimension that made it stand out.

The delivery of a song really will make or break the entire package, and in Stephanie's case, she really did make "GAME".