The Singles Jukebox

Pop, to two decimal places.

The Boyz – Right Here

Anyone think that all the good boy band namez were taken already?


[Video][Website]
[5.11]

Anna Suiter: The Boyz, to their credit, are incredibly cohesive. In such a large group, this can be either good or bad. It can be good because the song ends up sounding more even and the group seems smaller, but it can be bad because the song might never really crest. For this song in particular, it’s a bit of both. “Right Here” is cute enough, but it doesn’t really try to reach higher, and that’s really a shame.
[4]

Crystal Leww: It’s fitting that the music video for “Right Here” seems to suggest Sitcom Theme Song vibes. Because uh, that’s what the song itself sounds like.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Some of the more enthusiastic yeah-yeahs I’ve heard this year wedded to rather good riffing and a permafrost of electronics. The 1975, you listening?
[6]

Iain Mew: With its production so stuffed full as to achieve a rather unique effect, “Right Here” is a sonic infinity mirror room of reflections and repetitions, stretching out until the original shape becomes irrelevant. And it’s still not as discombobulating as the shiny KitKat top one of them wears in the video. 
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Still a bit too heavy on the 2013-era SHINee and pre-2016 VIXX influence, but still perfectly able to pull off exuberant, busy bangers. The trademark Albi Albertsson synth jumps and flourishes do the rest of the trick. 
[7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: High-energy boy band fare from the Mussashi camp that features all-too-familiar homophony, buzzing synth flourishes, and lyrics about the excitement of courting a lover. The Boyz are here all right, and that’s all they really have to offer.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: An exemplar of the hyperactive banger that no country has ever produced in such quality or quantity as South Korea, but “Right Here” also tips its hat to a bunch of older sounds. Parts of it remind me of 90s video game music, like something stretching the very limits of a 16-bit console’s sound chip, and the pulse and throb and spoken intro all have something of the millennial Western boy band sound to them. All of these are great things, but “Right Here” suffers from being too much, having too much, and coming out as a chaotic mess. As a hook delivery device it excels but man do I have a headache.
[6]

Ryo Miyauchi: The Boyz’s past singles similarly announced its arrival with some deliberate effort to build a feeling of event in the music, and the group couldn’t make it more aware about how it’s so ready to take in the attention in “Right Here.” It’s undoubtedly playful, sexy and cool, though I want to applaud these boys for more than simply following the boy-band pop formula to a T.
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: I was just saying to my sister the other day how badly I missed the soundtracks to Disney Channel Original Movies, so this was a nice surprise.
[6]