Challenge for this post: remain objective.

I guess you could say I fall into the category of a ‘hardcore’ Soshi fan right at this moment, with pretty much every spare dollar I have going towards contributing to whatever amount of peanuts SM Entertainment is paying the girls, or putting money into their wig fund or helping out with fees for their English lessons. 

Having said that, I only really become a fan of the group since that stunner of a Japanese album they released so I was really hoping that The Boys would build on that good work - bringing their Korean music up to date with a mature sound to match their slicker, more sophisticated visual image.

The signs were promising - all that hype & publicity surrounding the Teddy Riley-penned title track was justified when the full version was unleashed and it turned out to be an absolutely stonker of a song with its relentless catchy, in-your-face hooks. I can’t say I feel the same way about the rest of the album though. As I feared, a lot of the songs venture into diabetes-inducing bubblegum pop territory, which was what made me loathe their music circa Baby Baby in the first place. Sigh.

Notes:
・The intro of Say Yes blatantly rips off Ben E. King’s Stand by Me, not to mention the opening English lines sound like something written by a lovestruck teenager with overly active hormones.
・I can only imagine that Lazy Girl was included for the sole reason of having dear Sica sing the ‘I’m a lazy girl’ line. It sounds like the sort of song my parents boogied down to in some dinky nightclub with a shifting mud floor, back in the ’70s.
・Vitamin has the most epic instrumental opening of the tracks on the album, before we’re brought back down to earth by the cheesiness of the music from the Vita commercial. So misleading…
・The inclusion of the Korean version of Mr.Taxi is wholly unnecessary, the song just doesn’t fit in with the overall mood of the album.
・The ballads (How Great is Your Love, Sunflower) go down pretty well, but they’re not on the level of Complete or Mistake.
・Telepathy is just so bad ’80s disco.
・Imagine yourself wearing a bright pink summer dress & a straw hat with picnic basket in hand, skipping through a field of sunflowers…My J would be your perfect theme song at that moment.
・Trick is the best song (that is not The Boys) on the album by a country mile. It works the autotune to good effect, is snappy and has a purpose - to get you on the dancefloor.
・After Trick, I’d nominate Top Secret as my favourite album track - I like its retro feel, the harmonies during the chorus and most of all, Hyoyeon’s rap.
・Oscar is nearly ruined by its similarity to the material of a certain someone named Britney Spears as well as its rather amusing nursery rhyme-like lyrics, but it just about works. Just about.

After some consideration, I would say at least that The Boys is the best of their 3 Korean albums so far, music-wise. If I were to score it on a 10-point scale, I’d say a smack-in-the-middle 5 based on initial impressions. That opinion might change over time though, so watch this space to find out how much more I grow to love or hate the songs…when the inevitable repackaged album hits.

For now I’ll just sit back and re-watch the music videos, anticipating the day I get to watch some of these songs performed live (while waiting for my copies of the album to arrive >_>).