M-E-L-Ismatic

 

Brrrrraaaaahh! My first post-KPop-Special Post regarding New Evolution of the 21st Century, better known as 2NE1. The fierce foursome are following up their debut self-titled mini album that was released back in July with a bouncy, robotic new digital single after a series of solo and sub-group tracks.  The song is called  "따라 해봐요"  which roughly translates to "Try to Copy Me" or "Try To Be Like Me", and serves as a crosspromotional (a common occurrence with Korean Pop Music) with Samsung. Whether or not this will be part of their impending and expected sophomore release is undetermined as far as I can tell.

"Copy" follows up where their debut single "Fire" left off, complete with catchy hooks, vocal monotones and lots and lots of Auto-Tune. While my distaste for the excessive use of it has not changed, I do feel it kind of enhances the robotic, technological feel of the song -- a forward thinking kind of concept that is summed up in the group's name. Honestly, the song doesn't need an English translation, as the sheer girlpoweriness radiates off it in waves. 

One of the reasons why I like 2NE1 so much is they firmly walk the line between cute and feminine (which so many of the KPop girls rely on) and female empowerment and independence. Their songs are less cutesy and more like female versions of more "urban" sounding cuts done by boy bands. "Try To Copy Me" is hardly their best effort (and why should it be, it's an ad-placement single), but it's a fun one to groove while we wait for new music from them that grows in a good way as time goes on.

There are lots of fun bits to the song, especially rapper Minzy's call out hook "M-I-N-Z-Y, M-I-N-Z-Y" (for whatever reason, my hears register a similarity of this bit to Rihanna's "Hard" where she states, "Yep, you know this". Strange.). However, fierociousness hits a new level during the bridge. I'm not sure which member is singing (I'm guessing Minzy or CL, and if someone could enlighten, that would be great!), but there's this defiant "Brrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!" sound effect, and I swear I have listened to this song about five times back to back just to hear that bit again. You can hear the whole song here (the part I'm talking about is around the 2:18 mark), or watch the Samsung commercial which features a snippet of it below. Warning, cutesyness overload, Will Robinson. Please don't judge the song or the group based just on the commercial.