Album title: Limitless
Artist: NCT 127
Genre: K-pop
Nationality: Korean
Release date: January 6
Position in Discography: Second
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? No; only vaguely familiar with the female side so far
Check out more from this artist? Not in this life
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? Yes, but only girlpop. So I'm a chauvinist. Sue me.
So we're back to K-pop, but this time it's my first experience of the boyband aspect of the genre. K-pop may be something I never quite understand: this band are apparently named for having “unlimited members” and for those members coming from all sorts of different areas. NCT stands for, believe it or not, Neo Culture Technology, and NCT 127 are only one “unit” of a bunch of NCT bands. Hmm. Well although it begins almost as a darkish hip-hop song the opener quickly slides into banal boyband territory. Now, the girlband side of this surely does the same, but there's something – to me, anyway – different about listening to a bunch of girls sing. There's some heart and soul in what they sing. Here, this just sounds like Korean boys trying to sound like Nsync or Backstreet Boys. Probably is the case for all K-pop, but I can maybe ignore it more with the girl bands. This does nothing for me, and has what I'm now recognising to be a facet of K-pop, the mixing of English and Korean lyrics.
Not doing anything for me. At least it's short, a mere six tracks. Yeah, call it sexist if you want – it almost certainly is – but I enjoy listening to the girls, not so much the boys. This is hella boring and derivative. If I had to choose the song I hate most, “Heartbreaker” gets the turd prize, mind you the rap on the following track, “Baby don't like it” comes close. Seriously, most of this is pretty awful. I may have to revisit my opinion of K-pop. Where are my girls when I need them?
