The Singles Jukebox

Vibrations of controversy!

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Sonya Nicholson: With Stellar there’s always the moral dilemma of supporting a group whose company have been actively marketing them as “good girls who didn’t want to” do all this sexual stuff, but “we” made them because it sells. (And who is “we”? Company, industry, fans, even casual listeners, all complicit.) “Vibrato” brings a new twist, however, which is that in the end… Stellar are into it too! Surprising even themselves. Is it the truth? Who knows, but I’d certainly like that fig leaf. “Vibrato” is the complete K-pop package, from image (as discussed), to music (very good, especially the shift after the tempo change), to video (sleazy, sexy, goofy, self-aware, and arousing, by turns). It’s the sync between the parts as much as the individual parts that are selling me on this thing. 
[9]

Patrick St. Michel: I mean…I get why the video has attracted the bulk of attention over the last couple months, but I also think it has something to do with how nondescript the actual song is. A summery disco number out of Korea about first love — it sounds nice, but I’ve also heard this a bunch of times before in much better guises. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: The vocal heights they hit are like an alarm sounding; they snap you to attention. Not that everything else is an afterthought: that switch from half-speed electropop to the frantic funk is incredible. It’s just that the vocals — which only stop when the track does — give this more now-ness than any other disco-funk tune in a long while.
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: The tempo change is a good trick, but honestly this disco track seems a bit too stressed and K-Pop once again proves their adoration of saxophones in arrangements can lead to some real hit or miss work.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Pleasingly perky K-pop with a nice tempo-change breakdown. It’s unexceptional, but it works. 
[5]

Mo Kim: On “Marionette,” they were dull-eyed playthings, pushed to and fro by a cruel love interest in the song and scorned and fetishized in equal measure by the Korean viewing public. “Look at me,” its chorus declared in quiet desperation, refusing to let its audience disengage even when what it was seeing was ugly. “Vibrato” is a sonic step beyond anything that precedes it in Stellar’s discography: its rhythms more elastic; its instrumentation more lush (no small credit to Sweetune’s subtly textured production, which lets each motif recede before bringing it back into sharp, throbbing focus). Yet for all the bounce in its step, the song unfurls as an exercise in vulnerability, “a flower that’s blossomed in the ice” giving way first to an “aura melting bit by bit” and then the “trembling” that translates into “Vibrato” in English, unwilling feelings of desire for a lover or an audience spun into sharp delivery, calculated technique. As the song delves more into the emotional helplessness of it all, it throws more and more at us until we hit that accelerated climax, packed with instruments and breathy ad-libs: I got trapped, got trapped, but so did you, you who stuck around this long to see what was going to come next. There’s also the video, which frames the quartet in an endless hallway full of mirrors, and the real-life controversy of them fighting their agency for the right to wear less-revealing clothing, but the song is its own artifact, a glimmering diamond of a tune with deceptively sharp edges.
[9]

Jessica Doyle: A different group might have powered through on “Marionette”; Stellar didn’t have the energy to keep the song from getting sodden. “Vibrato” compensates by quickening the pace, adding a careful dash of strings, and creating a nicely propulsive chorus. Whether or not that’s enough to overcome the layer of exploitative grime covering the whole operation is a matter of personal judgment. I will note that the members don’t look much happier or more comfortable doing the “pure cute” version. Also that this footage exists, though it doesn’t seem to have been subbed yet.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Disco strings like ribbons of knives, romantic desire as something both overwhelming and slightly horrifying, machine-tooled dance that both catches you up in the rapture and beats you into submission; this is a very good song about emotions that are often presented as wholly uncomplicated in pop. More death disco, please.
[8]