The Singles Jukebox

“Yeah, you need the video…”

[Video][Website]
[5.09]

Katherine St Asaph: GDFR: God Damn Fucking Retreads.
[3]

Madeleine Lee: It’s not as “GDFR” as UNIQ, since the more popular you get, the less derivative you have to be, but it’s not original enough to overcome the comparison. It’s more staid than “Fun Boys,” but it compensates with a stronger chorus and funny career-drag costumes, so that’s fine. It got to “jjeoreo” faster than GD&T.O.P did, as expected of a group with their ears closer to the ground than to the top floor of the YG building, but T.O.P saying “Francis Bacon in my kitchen” is brilliant, and Rap Monster’s yukpo joke is belaboured. Basically, it doesn’t go far enough one way or the other. I will readily agree that BTS are dope, but “Dope” is not as inventive, or cool, or even as unlistenable and cheesy as I know they can be.
[6]

Jessica Doyle: So the song is an homage to working hard. The video (yeah, you need the video, the song doesn’t do much on its own) throws in: cosplay; Rap Monster as ringmaster and occasional tempo controller; J-Hope being 140 percent limbs; Jungkook making big eyes at the camera; various random kicks and finger-guns; Jimin beginning to strip; more cosplay; all of them running madly in one direction for no good reason. In other words, it is BTS 101. It is not the quickest way to convert an innocent bystander from mild amusement to all-caps despair (that’s this video), but should you ever end up trapped in an elevator with the despairing, this will help you understand what afflicts them.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: Do sax whines justify unearned swagger any better? No, but since when should swagger be earned?
[7]

Thomas Inskeep: BTS’s The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Pt. 1 is one of my favorite records of the year — but this is my least favorite track on it, largely because it goes hard for an EDM-pop sound. Larded with that ultra-fake EDM sax and a bunch of needless builds and drops, this goes nowhere. 
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: The janky sax can be forgiven, as “Dope” is as tightly constructed as any big-time K-Pop number. Yet it’s sorta weird listening to a song glorifying the intense work conditions of the industry, and tough to get pumped to lyrics such as “even if our youth rots in the studio/thanks to that, we’re closer to success.” Like, congrats on your dance moves and “hustle life,” but it still feels like I’m listening to a future labor case.
[5]

David Sheffieck: The attitude and propulsion of the verses is plenty compelling, particularly with the limber way the production shifts for each and the way each vocalist builds precisely to the pre-chorus. But can we please just throw that saxophone sound down a deep well and collectively agree to never speak of it again?
[5]

Alfred Soto: “I Need You” was such a sumptuous bump ‘n’ grind that I knew it was a fluke, and the wannabe hard rapping on “Dope” is as gauche as the horn hook. 
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Hair-metal conviction with EDM dynamics, and less fun than that sounds. I do like the sax sample being tortured to death.
[4]

Mo Kim: I’m not sitting in the dining hall at 1am on a Sunday evening because I didn’t try hard enough. I had work on Saturday morning, then a friend dropped by on Saturday afternoon, and then a truly wicked headache hit me and I had to lie down for several (ten) hours. College is scary, the constant pressure to measure up and temptation to dress down hitting like a one-two punch, but this world isn’t new to me. Like many Korean high school kids, some of whom today have “Dope” as their morning alarm or their ringtone or their running playlist opener, I grew up surrounded by adults and media figures telling me the only thing that gave me worth was my work, grew up seeing a lot of my friends losing their ideals or their self-confidence or both. On one level, BTS is operating on this boilerplate premise of work as a tangible, but on another they’re reframing it. It’s a song where work ethic is connected to the flourishing of an inner self rather than its loss, the beginnings of empowerment rather than its end: “I’ll do this differently from the other guys, [it’s] my style,” Jungkook asserts in the first eight bars, while rapper SUGA raps about watching his “youth rot away” like he’s waiting for something else to grow out of that fertilized ground. It’s a club song that shits on people who go clubbing, the pre-chorus boasting of “working all night every day” while you were busy partying it up, and that “Thrift Shop” riff may be cheap, but it’s celebratory nonetheless, the fruit of hard labor. Sure, “Dope” is accusatory and a little over-sincere and more than a little in poor taste given what job prospects look like in Seoul right now. But fuck measuring success in jobs, fuck the adults who hold them above kids’ heads while judging them for jumping too low, and fuck anybody who thinks they can take your work and all that it means away from you. This was written for us, not them. Feel free to dance.
[7]

Brad Shoup: [flo rida voice] IT’S GOIN’ DOWN FOR FUNSIES
[5]