 | I genuinely like EXO, they have great skills and fabulous potential . . . But I don’t really understand them. Or why everyone seems so completely crazy in love with them. Though they have tremendous potential, they really just aren't that good. |
Until this last release they were just SHINee/TVXQ revamps. XOXO has been a step in the right direction (being that there’s no direct sampling from other SM songs), but still, they feel like a SHINee/TVXQ fusion/cover/revamp group. XOXO has some pretty good songs on it, but some of the songs are sampled from other EXO songs, instead of copying SHINee/TVXQ/SM-as-a-whole they’re revamping their own material … (very well certainly, but that’s beside the point).
I am not even kidding here, Baby, Peter Pan, Heart Attack, AND Don’t Go have the same MIDI melody backing just put on different instruments and mixed with slight differences {and that’s just what jumped out (more like lunged out and hit me over the head with a sledge hammer) at me on a single listen-through} … Yes, it’s a great melodic lead, but it should be spread through multiple releases, otherwise it’s just cheap-ass production shortcut.
There’s also the issue of imbalance between how the Korean and Chinese versions are treated by the production team. Rather than making and mixing each song entirely independent of it’s other-language partner, they’re made together. I can tell because the one made first is distinctly better than the one made secondly. Wolf is better in the Korean because it was made first because it’s the ticket to promoting in Korea. All of the the others are dramatically better in the Chinese because Chinese is a hell of a lot harder to fit into a song period and therefore the Chinese versions were made first to ensure that they would fit neatly (which they do) with minimal effort. The Korean versions are then left with some serious low-cut issues that leave them feeling airy and empty … it's chintzy and cheap and screams of shortcutting. The only reason the dual versions were made was to enhance its multi-market appeal.
And besides, the whole concept is just so . . . safe. CrossGene's smashing success with the multilingual thing made it obvious that the concept was viable. With SM's resources, it's inconceivable that they'd struggle with it, and as SM's stronghold is tipped towards China more than Japan, and SuJu-M has established a precedent for Chinese-language music with a kpop flair, having EXO's bi-lingual element be Mandarin rather than Japanese is the natural result of trying the concept out at all.
And also, I’d prefer that instead of a million versions of each song being released (as cool as having ten of essentially the same track is), each song/album has code-switching INSIDE it, so that Korean, Mandarin, even Japanese and English, maybe even Thai, Vietnamese, etc appeared inside a single release. They could be different songs, but I’d LOVE it if each language had a verse or chorus or something. It’d be a bitch to make, but SM is one of the only companies in all of Asian music that has the reputation and resources to pull it off.
I think it could be cool.
But SM is dumb and dying; they're refusing to take risks, incapable of admitting to their short comings, and painfully obtuse as they run around the music world like a middle school bully, so I can’t expect them to attempt something cool for sake of the music.
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