The Singles Jukebox

But is there going to be a Frankee remix?

[Video][Website]
[5.25]

Jessica Doyle: “Last Dance” is the more overt valediction, but this too seems meant for the longtime “ladies so loyal” more than anyone else–the fans who long ago got comfortable with GD’s self-absorption, T.O.P’s ambivalence, and Seungri’s playing transparently insincere Lothario for the bridge. (I don’t think they’re actually saying “I love y’all” in the chorus, as this translation has it, but the mishearing seems appropriate: y’all, plural, collective.) You wouldn’t expect a resigned song about nothing really lasting, hinging on the repetition of “fuck it,” to be sweet, but this is sweet.
[6]

Mo Kim: “I don’t want to go too fast,” Taeyang sings in the first verse, “cause nothing really lasts.” If that’s a dark place to start, it doesn’t look up much: everything about this sounds a touch off-kilter and sad, like Big Bang are staring at their disheveled reflections through the disco ball at a college rager they’re getting too old for. The youngest member of Big Bang, Seungri, just turned 26; meanwhile, T.O.P is finally entering South Korean military service, temporarily putting the brakes on a franchise boy band that over the last 11 years has cast a large shadow over K-pop. No time for those details in the song, though, just a sneer of a verse from G-Dragon; T.O.P yell-rapping through the haze even as it chops and stretches his voice; a drop in the chorus that sounds more like a headache than a good time. But fuck if it doesn’t make me a little misty.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Previous singles showed their ear for approximating American hip-hop and machine funk; this ear turned with the inevitability of a sunrise to the popularity of the Chainsmokers. And here we are.
[3]

Madeleine Lee: At their peak, half of Big Bang’s cool came from the closeness of their music to their American rap and pop contemporaries, if not precisely in sound then definitely in feeling. But this only worked as long as the rest of K-pop still came off like it was trying to reverse-engineer trends from a few years earlier. Now the rest of K-pop has caught up, and the relevance of Big Bang’s music is no longer a given. NCT 127’s mini album that came out last week has its ultra-trendy tropical whistles and rattles woven throughout; by comparison, G-Dragon and Teddy’s one-off approximation of a Chainsmokers instrumental is predictable and dull. The other half of Big Bang’s cool was their vitality and ferocity, but as the title of this song suggests, that’s not what it once was, either. An extra point for getting ahead of the inevitable “it sounds like they’re saying ‘I wanna get down'” comments from the non-Korean-speaking world, though.
[5]

Ramzi Awn: The stark contrast between the flood of synths and the refrain is the only real thing going for “Fxxk It.” The rest is ancient pop hooks that sound more like tropes than tunes.
[3]

Micha Cavaseno: G-Dragon, aka the secret father of Lil Uzi Vert, might still be my favorite producer/songwriter in pop with how he endlessly plays with styles. Here, he’s got the DJ Snake-style vocal warps married to SoundCloud smeared-synth surges over generic boy band boisterousness, and he and T.O.P nearly always sound competent to extra-terrific on whatever they rap to. The problem is Taeyang (furthered by those corny-ass Crayola dreads in the video, which your reviewer went through a similarly awkward phase with in his teens), who’s become such a lazy and middling singer in a group setting. Daesung has always kind of endearingly struggled with his limitations, Seungri’s always casually there, but Taeyang is totally just cashing a check and reaping the rewards of Big Bang’s almost natural dominance. The song itself is also lazy — either purposefully to avoid the excessive eager-beaverness of their youth, or maybe the group’s gotten a bit too assured in their old age. But one thing’s for sure: the chilled-out vibe of late Big Bang could use a boost in energy before they start to turn the corner into pure boredom.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: A third of the hook to “Needed Me,” surrounded by a lot of loud nothing.
[5]

Adaora Ede: Big Bang of the “skrrrrt,” “bangya bangya bangya!”, “BOOM SHAKA LAKA” persuasion have found themselves living in the nice rancher-style that is “FXXK IT” — right next to the neighbors, the married-with-children pop-rock sound of Maroon 5. Oh, Big Bang always did have ballads and belters and SLOW JAMZZZZ. But never were they so underwhelming, as they were typically marinated in a nice RnB sound and didn’t make you feel like you were in your friend’s car listening to 40 Oz. to Freedom. And this is a midtempo track. Yikes. “FXXK IT” is true — it’s less snarly than usual, mildly listenable, and crescendos into the anthemic, but only to have you wondering why your glass is still in the air after the first or second “era moreugetda.” It might be an ode to the beautiful eccentricities of the Big Bang members’ fading twenties, it might be a hearty call-out for the haters, or it might just be a way to tell everyone that Big Bang is finally disbanding and G-Dragon is set to begin his American career featuring on P!nk songs. But it’s difficult to take rinky-dinky power pop to heart.
[5]