The Singles Jukebox

DAMN YOU, JONATHAAAAAAAAN…

[Video][Website]
[6.91]

Edward Okulicz: “Trouble Maker” takes a couple of sounds that would be annoying if you based a song entirely on them and arranges them so lovingly you forget all the annoying whistling songs of the last few years because you’re too busy double-clapping. If you doubted Asian pop music could be funky and was just a bunch of repetitive trebly nonsense, this should disabuse you of such notions within about 30 seconds.
[9]

Brad Shoup: Man, I hope “slight skinship” is an accurate translation — isn’t that beautiful? It’s whistle-disco on a grand scale, with a earthshaking four-on-the-floor stomp. It’s also a true duet, although JS comes out higher in the mix. I love how the whistling crops up as a stitching device, and that HyunA’s verse was positively go-go, and that we have a new eponymous hat trick.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Chirrupy disco that tries a trick even Bob Sinclar has probably realized is too cheap: whistling the hook. There’s no glide or funk here, and not even double handclaps can turn the bounce into pep. Earth, Wind and Fire demanded “Let’s Groove”; these dudes declined the invitation. 
[3]

Iain Mew: Between the lite-funk, the whistling and the brief but scene-stealing performance from the female half of the pair, I can’t help but think of this as being an alternate-reality “Moves Like Jagger.” An alternate reality in which “Moves Like Jagger” is likable instead of really annoying.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Somewhere, Adam Levine looked upon his betters and wept.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Not only does this boast a damnable whistled hook, it’s got the rhythmic thickness and sheet-metal guitar of Maroon 5 — the Maroon 5 that toyed with okay on its second album. As proxies go, I’ve heard worse, including the Aguilera horror.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Love the whistles, the noises that sound like bird sounds and the moving liquidly between various kinds of singing and speaking. Bits of it are wonderfully squelchy, and the last few seconds with the car and the fire and the gun are delightfully cheesy. Cinematic in the worst pulp ways, but still kind of amazing.
[8]

John Seroff: The moving parts of “Trouble Maker” (the Herrmann-by-way-of-Tarantino whistle hook, the funk bass, juicy synths, the driving drums) fit together in lovely fashion, but the stars of this production are the surprisingly strong R&B vocals. The hyper-sexual (even by American pop standards) video only feeds my suspicions that no more than a set of English-language lyrics are needed to make this song a legit US/UK crossover hit. Keep Hyuna in that mini, throw in eight bars from Pitbull and redub a reprise of JS and company’s Timberlake-inspired column dance, and there’s no reason not to expect heavy MTV and BET airplay.
[8]

Frank Kogan: There’s only one Korean boyband whose vocals are much better than adequate, and Hyun Seung’s Beast isn’t that boyband. Writer-producer Shinsadong Tiger does a great job with Seung’s paleness by centering the song around a light little whistle. The song’s got sex bomb HyunA up its sleeve too, but she keeps her animal magnetism relatively low-key as suits this bit of confectioners’ disco. Of course, it’s not so low-key as to prevent it from turning into yet another battle in Cube Entertainment’s campaign to secure the right of a young woman to titillate the world be assertively sexual. (Seriously, this fight still seems of import in Korea and its diaspora; I can’t read a HyunA or 4minute YouTube thread without someone calling her a slut or defending her against charges of sluttiness.)
[7]

Michaela Drapes: I can’t help but think of the fabulous, uncomfortable squirminess of Robbie Williams and Kylie doing “Kids.” “Trouble Maker” is insanely catchy, but there’s something so terribly wrong about the chemistry. And yet … you can’t look away. I spent a lot of time wondering how much of that I’m seeing through the lens of Western stereotypes of Asian sexuality; this is a place where I wish I had more understanding of local reactions, other than that this is a sweetly innocent quel scandal kind of thing.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: HyunA was already one of my favorite pop stars anywhere, so JS was the one who was a revelation. It’d be too reductive to call him a Korean Timberlake — he’s skipped right over Justin’s smarm-louche entertainer’s brio (no matter what he does, he’ll never shake that Mouseketeer’s eagerness to please) into effortless, even dangerous cool. What Michael Jackson had in the eighties — the late eighties, after he lost his own eagerness to please — he’s got, in the precision and absurdity of his dancing and the soar and snap of his voice. HyunA’s met her match, which if you’d asked me in 2011 was possible I would have said no. This is a deeply exciting partnership; it’s too bad the song can’t quite live up to the chemistry of its performers.
[7]