The Singles Jukebox

Remember the ’90s? No, the LATE ’90s…

[Video][Website]
[4.64]

Will Adams: Wait what, I thought I liked trance.
[4]

Madeleine Lee: Maybe they’re just giving the people exactly what they want, but I can get behind old K-pop groups like Turbo and Koyote coming back with more or less their exact ’90s sound. It’s a sound so specific to its place and era that new groups aren’t already filling that niche, and all the old songs sounded the same anyway, so what’s another one? The number of plays on this video speaks more to the global popularity of Kim Jong-kook and Yoo Jae-suk’s show Running Man than to wild demand for Turbo’s pummelling boss battle techno, but no matter. This isn’t innovative or anything, but it’s very fun.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Objectively bad displaced Euro-dance! Now there’s a genre I don’t hate at all. At least until I exit Winamp and re-enter reality.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: This is K-pop crossed with some crazy hi-NRG Ian Levine stuff, and boy oh boy is it fast. Unfortunately, that’s about all it is.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Its late nineties techno overtones and caffeinated rush suggest ‘N Sync after a couple cans of Sprite. The best part is the barked whoa-whoa-whoas.
[5]

Iain Mew: The barely musical turbo synths remind me more of Dempagumi.inc than any K-Pop we’ve encountered. On the potential plus side, Turbo add competent vocals; on the minus side they’re lacking in ideas to keep up the energy past the end of the intro.
[4]

Cassy Gress: I went into this thinking “Yoo Jae-Suk is in it. This is going to be something like ‘Gangnam Style.'” But it went the other way and was a 90s comeback + Running Man thing, and I am stupidly pleased about that. Musically, it would fit right in at Eurovision, or in DDR, or as one of those “international sporting event get everyone pumped” kinds of songs. But really, this gets a [7] because its existence makes me too happy not to.
[7]

Brad Shoup: For better and worse, the South Korean pop complex is a hall of mirrors: the 8-bit Euro-dance of “Again” stacks up perfectly flush to “Black Cat” or “Love Is” (minus the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” transposition on the latter). But there’s a strain here, a concession to a serious modern chart climate. The programming pushes and pushes, wiping out the funky trill of that intro synth riff. All Turbo can do is grip tight and hang on.
[5]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: The production is crisp and the synth layers are lush, it kinda sounds like a fun song to dance to at the Pump It Up Machine, but everything feels stuck in the late ’90s, and not in a good way. Well, this is coming from a group that released an album called “E-Mail my Heart”. 
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: “No, No, No” to this amount of pointless exertion, dated electro-goofiness and sloppy rapping. 
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: It boasts a bit of a contemporary sheen, but I’m glad Turbo didn’t stray too far from the Euro-glazed pop of their ’90s heyday, conveniently available on YouTube. As an energetic throwback, it works well enough.
[6]