Your editor’s favourite member is Yun Du-jun. Who’s yours?

[Video][Website]
[6.71]

Sabina Tang: Beast is the boyband label mate of 4 Minute, Hyuna’s consistently excellent home group — and the usual team of Hyunseung, the other one(tm) in Trouble Maker. They are to Cube Entertainment and 4 Minute what Big Bang are to YG and 2NE1 respectively (in this analogy, “Trouble Maker” is roughly equivalent to GD & TOP’s Bom-featuring “Oh Yeah”). Hyuna aside, though, Cube’s strength in recent years has had more to do with consistent production than star personality. Beast doesn’t come near Big Bang’s fashionable auteur edge; of all the major K-boybands that have impinged on my consciousness, they’re the guys who remind me most of amiable Johnnies acts like Arashi. I suspect they started out as a dance crew. “Midnight” itself, with its gentle acoustic lead-in and upbeat electro-pop catchiness, is neither a cut above nor a stylistic switch-up from Beast’s previous singles like “Fiction” or “Shock.” So when I assign it a [9], I’m saying this: Shinsadong Tiger is really good, you guys. Really, really good. If I made a top 25 list of songs I first heard in 2012, he’d be responsible for fully half of them. Dude is on a multi-year hot streak to rival 80’s Jellybean Benitez, and I’m just happy to verbally acknowledge it from time to time.     
[9]

Iain Mew: Neither the hushed ballad or heavy bosh elements of “Midnight” stand up quite well enough on their own for me to fall for it. The startling way that it switches instantly between the two several times over without seeming forced, however, is brilliant and I haven’t heard anything quite like it.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Midnight is nothing to me these days. I’m typing this at 1:45 AM, and I’ll be going hard ’til sunrise. I’m on a first-name basis with the overnight barista. I don’t recognize this kind of insomnia, this PSB-style production that can’t rise above its maniacal mood.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Confession: I tend to form my opinions about K-Pop songs by comparing them to similar singles in Japan, where I live.  It’s not fair to either side but my first exposure to Korean music came during the great K-Pop boom of 2010, when the likes of Girls’ Generation and KARA monopolized television time in this country.  And none of it sounded like anything coming out of the J-Pop industry.  I’ve gotten better about not doing this…save for most of the Korean boy bands (Big Bang being the exception).  “Midnight” offers up a great example of the differences between male-centric groups in both countries.  Japanese outfits, like Arashi or EXILE, have happy songs and sad songs and songs about graduating school and so forth.  They make music like Hallmark greeting cards – choose one for how you feel.  “Midnight,” meanwhile, manages to be melancholic (the guitar strumming, the lyrics) while still being a bouncy song that you could move along with.  It has depth, which is something the most popular boy bands in Japan don’t have and thus this is a welcome change for me. 
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Alternates between hot and cool, boshing and not boshing, but smoulders every single second of the way. “Slick” isn’t always a criticism, because to pull the tricks (and don’t for a second think they aren’t tricks, and obvious ones at that) without the seams showing is auteur’s work.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: I had to look up who the one with the tears in his voice was: Yoseob, who could turn into a George Michael if he wanted to. But this is too matey to function as the careless whisper that would make the turn.
[6]

Kat Stevens: The Adam Lambert one is clearly the best. He’s going to be the one with his own cookery show one day (assuming he doesn’t already have one).
[7]