Bo-peep Me Hard From Behind

I wouldn't say T-ara is my favorite girl group of the moment, but they're up there on a short list. I thought the song T.T.L. (Time to Love) was actually pretty good (despite the dudes). It's got a classic late 80s/early 90s dance pop (in Korea) sound to it.

"Bo Peep Bo Peep" on the other hand is pretty weak and is currently your #1 song in Korea. Basically they took the image, look and dance from Brown Eyed Girls "Abracadabra," put it to a much inferior song, then added some inexplicably stupid touches to said dance. Viola, #1. I don't so much mind the fact that it nicks Abracadabra -- if I got caught up in that I'd be hating on every K-pop song in existance. I don't even mind that the song isn't very good.

What bothers me mostly is the video, which is so over the top sexed-up it's embarrasing. Yeah, I just wrote that. Abracadabra, with it's also embarrassing faux-almost lesbian kiss at the end, was also dumb and out of character for Brown Eyed Girls, but at least that group has a hip-hoppy, at the club, leathery, sexed up image to begin with. "Bo Peep" doesn't sound sexy, and Tiara has always struck me as more of a pure-n-white kind of group, not a take-me-in-the-back-room-at-the-club-and-fuck-me kind of group.

It's sort of like if you're watching pro wrestling (I don't) and a villian emerges from the locker room spreading rose pedals in the crowd. It doesn't fit. I guess, since I feel I'm already demanding very little from Korean pop groups, I at least desire some consistancy in image. On this song T-ara isn't even consistant week to week -- here's a post New Year's live version where they're back to pure-n-white, which followed a bizzare sexy Hanbok thing that even the normally uber-positive Roboseyo found weird. Here's a video of a loser elementary school teacher doing the Bo Peep dance. Trust me, this song isn't that popular and not many people are doing the lame dance. In another two weeks everyone will have forgotten this song ever existed.

Here's the 19 and over version of Bo Peep and here's the 15 and up version.