TVXQ - Humanoids: Kpop Music Monday

CUZ WE A HYUUUU MUHHHH NOISE! If you haven’t seen TVXQ’s “Humanoids” check it out here:

First off, congrats to all the TVXQ fans who worked so hard to vote in “Catch Me” and now “Humanoid”! Hopefully you won’t be furious at us now after we didn’t review Catch Me. Yay!

Well, to begin with, we liked this song more than “Catch Me”. We found “Catch Me” to be a bit disconnected musically, as it felt like a frankenstien song, rock and pop and random break downs all pieced together, which is just not our style. We like “Humanoids” a lot more, since it almost feels like the complete opposite of “Catch Me”, what with its clean beat and simple synths.

We also love the choreography, which is really unique. It’s not often you have a two member kpop group, and while we know it wasn’t the original plan for TVXQ to be only two members, they’ve done a great job of creating a TVXQ dance unit which acts to both highlight Uknow and Max as the stars, and also create the feeling of a group by incorporating the backup dancers into the main dance routine. I think it’s very clever.

Actually, something that has bothered me about kpop for a while that I was reminded of while watching this video, is how female kpop groups get the short end of the cool dance stick. Which the exception of BoA, I’d say every other girl group out there gets sexy dances or dances with memorable dance points, but they never get anything like this. Nothing that is just a pure focus on dancing and dance moves. I think that kind of sucks, because sometimes I just want to see a girl group rock at dance moves. Looking at BoA’s “Eat You Up” and “Only One” or even SHINee’s “Sherlock” or UKISS’ “Neverland”… I can’t think of a recent time a female group rocked a dance like that. Nope. Sexy sexy sexy. Okay, rant over. Oh wait! Wonder Girls and Miss A are the exception to the not-sexy and somewhat cool dancing rule. They do fun dances, but – still – those dances aren’t super awesome impressive, you know? The dances look fun, but not cool.

Despite our happiness for this dance, we were actually (don’t kill us) really bored by this video. Whoa. Scripting for this was not a pleasant experience. There are essentially three different kind of scenes. The first being the backup dancers and TVXQ dancing on the sand in front of the wheels and futuristic buildings, the second being that glowing white room, and the last being that triangular florescent light room. Maybe it could be just because this week we did 18 videos for our Eat Your Kimchi Awards, and had to watch a whole bunch of videos at once, but – really – there wasn’t much that really stood out in this video to make it original. Good looking boys dancing well. Sometimes I just want something different, you know? I don’t always need a modelling showcase or a portfolio of headshots. Give me something artistic or something with a good plot. This video was just so, formulaic. Apart from tiny detail changes, can you really say that there’s anything vastly different about TVXQ’s videos? Keep Your Head Down, Catch Me, and Humanoids: all really good dances, all looking all serious, all special effecty. I’m constantly getting the feel that TVXQ are otherworldly and everything they do is of extreme importance, be it with time traveling or exploding or something. You know what I’m saying? I want to see them dress up in animal costumes again! Hey TVXQ: go out and have fun! Go out and talk to girls! Do more videos like “Before You Go!” That was fun. I don’t want to see another video about how awesome you are.

Anyhow, the song is still good! If you haven’t picked it up yet, you can do so by buying the CD at YesAsia, or you can download it on iTunes here. And, as always, we’ve got bloopers. Being the Sailor Scouts was more fun than expected…