From Grace, a convergence of K-pop forces…

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Grace Callaghan: Taking us back to the 90s, “Wow Thing” is refined and reminiscent of En Vogue. Soyeon from (G)I-DLE  features in this song which goes some way to explaining why I think  I hear some TLC thrown in too.
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Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Each one of these women have very different voices and styles, pulling from different pop traditions, and yet they meld perfectly in this wonderfully layered piece of turn-of-the-century R&B-pop beauty. It’s like the Korean Lady Marmalade moment we all secretly wanted. 
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: What happens when you get four relatively young (but successful) female K-pop singers to collaborate on a song? Well, you get the one reference point that suits all their disparate musical styles: Yours Truly-era Ariana Grande. If you made a short list of the Western artists who influenced K-pop’s sound this past decade, few could claim to be as important as Grande herself. It makes sense given her image and the “proper” pop genres she traversed on her debut. “Wow Thing” is consequently solid but completely safe: less “Wow” than “Thing.”
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Ryo Miyauchi: The Ariana Grande-fictation of K-pop has been an interesting development to follow these past few years. It’s a line to connect particularly with the solo career of Chung Ha, who sounds most at home over the squiggly funk-pop beat referencing the Jeff Lorber Fusion riff which now exists as a ’90s R&B touchstone. But while Chung Ha and co. ends up to the similar epiphany of self-love sung by Ari these days, they all channel pride into more exuberant music that brings the glamor expected from such a star-filled line-up.
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Micha Cavaseno: For a few years now, the formula beholden to Ariana Grande in particular of reviving 90’s style ‘jiggy’ rap/R&B grooves have managed to main recurring go-to’s for K-pop to varying results. “Wow Thing” manages to succeed and hit super hard, thanks to the use of rough Ced Gee-type drum breaks mixed into the piano bashes with a playful funkiness that allows Seulgi, SinB and Chung Ha to simultaneously float above and likewise get driven along by the strenuous propulsion blasting them further. Helping it out even further is Jeon Soyeon’s rapping. Last year’s “Jelly” showed she was already absurdly deft at finding the beat and scampering around it with magnificent technique, and this year she’s even now still demonstrating great performances. Combine the bunch, and you have a surprisingly potent jam that’s interesting for how effectively it combines the girls from disparate seeming groups to a pretty natural hit.
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Jessica Doyle: A cute song, albeit with such sparse instrumentation it feels as if the singers’ efforts are backed up by a wall made of poorly stuffed pillows. The song feels lighter and less memorable than it should, and while I’m liking this idea of letting K-pop women mix it up outside of their groups, it was better served by the Seulgi/Moonbyul duet.
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Alex Clifton: Look, I’m going to love anything that has a line involving “boom boom boom,” and this is a brilliant piece of R&B sugar. I’m slightly disappointed this isn’t just a Red Velvet song because this would not sound out-of-place on one of their albums, but this is a delightfully cohesive and smooth collaboration where I feel like every girl brings something different to the table. This may have been created in a lab; it’s so polished and catchy, every beat is designed to make you want to dance. Even if that is the case, though, I don’t care. This is the kind of pop music I live for.
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Will Rivitz: Very occasionally, I’ll have intelligent things to say about songs I like; even more rarely, there are times I’m able to characterize what in particular about its construction, lyrics, or production style make it so successful. This is not one of those times. Every time I re-listen, trying to make sense of the burrowing guitar or infectious boom-bap bounce, my brain automatically shuts off, able to think things like “THIS SHIT DINGS” and naught else for three and a half minutes. I would love to describe the anchoring effect of Soyeon’s rock-solid second verse or the effortless swagger of the choruses, but all I can say with any confidence is that “Wow Thing” slaps with enough force to register on the Richter scale. It’s good.
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