Hot off the trails of the release of their first full-length album, “Pinocchio“, f(x) continue to roll with the punches this season as they trail blaze through another round of promotions with the follow-up track, “Hot Summer.”
After unleashing an album in standard K-pop fashion, SM Entertainment has made the move of designating “Hot Summer” as the lead single of f(x)’s repackaged album, a repackage of the same album (Pinocchio) that was released just a couple of months ago.
In it, you will find the title track, as well as digital singles “Chu” and “La Cha Ta“, and the OST track, “You Are Hiding A Secret“.
Lately, it’s become a normality of SM Entertainment to reach their paws into a bag of Western songs to pull out their next ‘big hit’. Especially in the last couple of years, those songs have revealed themselves to be noise-makers with very minimal maintenance (that is, simple covers of their original makers). So when the teaser of “Hot Summer” made its rounds across the internet, it was announced that this single was in fact another already existing song that was purchased by the company to be used by f(x).
And lo and behold, the song fit the bill perfectly. Rather than making themselves act cute for their follow-up track (like label-mates Super Junior and SHINee have done), the girls are back with that same crunchy, gritty sound that dripped from the ends of their previous single, “Danger.”
What f(x) have that makes this song come alive over the original singers – girl group, Monrose – are five voices versus their three. Splitting the lines among the five members adds a small touch of variety to “Hot Summer”, which given the rudimentary composition of the song, could use all that it can take.
Aside from what sounds like clipping, and the ear-shattering mix, the vocal treatment on f(x) is done really well. They don’t sound like chipmunks, nor are they speaking with the childish voices that they tend to dabble with nowadays. The melodies are a notch above those in “Danger”, and really, this could very well be retitled to Danger 2.0 since it takes the two good things from that song and redirects its energy in a more organized and sensible way through “Hot Summer.”
It kind of actually makes audible sense this time; the biting production tears into your ears as mercilessly as the scorching sun would upon your skin in the most unbearable hours of summer.
Nonetheless, it still doesn’t escape me that f(x)’s “Hot Summer” remains to be another lazy release from SM Entertainment. While this song is perched two steps above its predecessor, it is still glamorously monotonous. It is still one-note, and clearly not as strong as it could be for f(x) had they been treated with the SM producers who worked on the greater songs of their senior label-buddies.
But with that said, this is very much f(x) through and through. This girl group is consistent with their lead singles and that’s something to be acknowledged. Where things start falling apart is in the incongruous gatherings of their B-side tracks, but if they take the edge and gritty style they possess as a girl group, and do away with the exhausting musical tendencies of K-pop, they could potentially return (again) with something worth a riot.
Overall Rating: 3.5/5What are your thoughts on f(x)’s new single?
