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SG Wannabe 3rd album

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I know I’m not going to make myself popular with some of the visitors to this site, but I’m not going to give this CD a rave review. If I say that it’s the sort of music a teenager could put on the CD player and not have her father say “what are you listening to that infernal racket for?”, you might get the picture. Another way of putting it is that if Korea were to enter the Eurovision Song Contest, none of the tracks on this album would be out of place in that competition. The band has some good singers, but to be honest they’re let down by their composers and arrangers.

The weakest songs on this album are the ones with big orchestration — the big ballad-style ones. One of the over-used compositional techniques which I’m afraid grates on me is the need to shift up a key around two thirds through the song; and if you’re really unlucky you’re put up a further semitone to crank up the emotion one more notch in the last reprise of the chorus. The opening track 내 사람 is one of those and put me in a bad mood for the rest of the album. In fairness though, some of the numbers with more economical instrumentation are good to listen to — for example the fourth track with an appearance from 데니안, and in the fifth track, the quiet Love Song, the singer shows some good well-controlled top notes which the guy from Coldplay should envy.

It’s sung well, professionally put together, and absolutely fine to listen to, but not something I will return to often. Sorry.

By the way, the picture is an exact image of the packaging for the CD. It explains the problem I highlighted my earlier rant asking how we’re supposed to store these things.

3 thoughts on “SG Wannabe 3rd album

  1. OK, I had the CD on first thing this morning, and that’s probably not the best time to listen to it. I’m now listening to it at around midnight, which is a much better time, because this is slow, emotional (over-emotional?) music. I’m still not going to say it’s a great album, but there are some tracks I like a lot more than I did this morning. So I’m afraid I’ve cheated a little, and updated my original post to be a bit less unenthusiastic. Don’t let me stop you going out and getting this disk (if you can work out how to store it!), but I’m afraid I won’t be exploring their other albums.

  2. I think I kind of see your taste in music after reading this review. If you’re into the idea of less is more, then their 3rd album is definitely not for you… you’d probably enjoy their first two albums more. You know how it is, artists are always pushed to make new albums that bigger and better than the last one… and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

    I actually like their big-ballad style songs… that’s pretty much what they’re known for… and their fantastic vocals. I also like the first track because it’s different from their previous works. I find it refreshing. I’m not that fond of Danny Ahn’s rapping so don’t particulary like track #4.

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