Babymint – BB Gals of the Galaxy
And with Han Li, we blast off into the recent past…

[Video]
[6.45]
Han Li: After their wildly inventive run on NEXTGIRLZ last year, I was worried babyMINT had lost their spark. Their debut single sounded rote and well… boring. But then they released “BB Gals of the Galaxy”, a song which saw them back on their bullshit (complimentary). It leans into their weirdness, swerving from idea to idea. There are so many pieces of ear candy: the aborted intro by Siena they kept in, the infantile simplicity of the synths during the “laser gun BUI BUI” chorus, the bits where they repeat phrases like a record skipping, the cascading notes sprinkled throughout the pre-chorus. Most of all, it makes me feel the carefree innocence of being young. A time when everything felt easy and all your ideas worked. When you could screw up the intro but things still fell perfectly into place.
[8]
Iain Mew: Releasing in between the thrillingly harnessed chaos of “Booooooring” and “\ Lucy!!!!!! /”, this was comparatively underwhelming on release. Babymint’s kind-of-debut-album at the end of 2023 demonstrated a foundation of more conventional musical appeal beyond the meme and gabba stuff, though, and in context of their since-released EP “BB Gals of the Galaxy” works something like the most similar “Grab Me If U Can!!” from that album. Light, stylish pop with just enough biu-biu laser noises and vacuum synth sounds for a flavour of something beyond.
[7]
Katherine St. Asaph: Despite never owning a Bratz doll, I am an avowed fan of the Bratz music franchise. What I like is how the albums (for whatever value of “albums”) round up session songwriters to produce more accurate and often better pastiches of McBling pop hits than the years-removed homages of Rina or Charli or Tate McRae. (Sorry, I just can’t do the mononym yet.) Honestly, they embody the sound of their year more than the real hits do. And this could be Bratz: Space Angelz, if it came out when the dominant sound was NewJeans ripoffs.
[5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The least kitschy Babymint song I’ve heard as of yet — but even without the sheer kitchen sink charisma of “Hellokittybalahcurri” this is still a joy, full of enough quirks to support most acts for an entire album cycle. Yet what impresses me about “BB Gals of the Galaxy” is how it also works well as just straight ahead synth pop, the chant-a-long vocals balancing well with an array of arrpegios that bring to mind futuristic ice cream trucks.
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: More demure (yet certainly not more mindful) than the enthusiastically unhinged “Hellokittybalahcurry3,” “BB Gals of the Galaxy” is almost disappointing for being a well-made chiptune track. What could be more indie than leaving in the false start to your verse as a signifier of authenticity? The silliness of making space-gun noises for a chorus kicks things up a pop notch, but it’s the appended and slightly warped “do do-do do do” in the hook that catches my ear: a hummed melody that seems natural enough to appear in an idol song and so tossed off that it might stick in your head as you’re weaving your way through an asteroid belt.
[6]
Ian Mathers: Yeah, it’s a bit of a shame they seemed to have backed away from the formal inventiveness, stylistic dexterity and sheer everything of “Hellokittybalahcurri³ hellokitty????,” but one suspects that kind of pace is unsustainable and this is still a very fun song, just more straightforward. (And the video still has… lots of that stuff.)
[7]
Taylor Alatorre: “Hellokittybalahcurri” was about riding the highs of a new crush through the limitlessness of digital space, and “BB Gals” extends that ride into the outer cosmos, of which the group has a more militaristic vision than I might have expected. The laser gun mouth sounds detract from the ethereal sleekness of the post-hyperpop production, which for a group like babyMINT is probably the goal. It’s a flex, sort of: “we’re so talented that the fear of being ‘boringly perfect’ is a real concern for us, so we’ll just put the names of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in our chorus for no discernable reason.” I think they’re being used as verbs here but I’m not sure.
[7]
Melody Esme: I was willing to forgive references to Guardians of the Galaxy and The Mandalorian. I’m not much of a sci-fi fan, and I’m certainly not a Star Wars or MCU fan, but the way the words “Baby Yoda” are sung is so smooth and satisfying that it almost makes up for all the annoying memes we had to deal with five years ago. (Obviously the worst thing to happen in 2020, right?). And anyway, I love the breakbeats and the laser gun sounds and the little SOPHIE-esque touches–that little “MSMSMS” boink tube sound especially. I was gonna give it a thumbs up! But then… man, I don’t know what “Elon Musk that dude”/”Zuckerberg that dude” means. It doesn’t seem like a pro-billionaire sentiment, at the very least. Let’s see if we can pick up any context from the video. Wait… oh no, they’re forcing me to defend Zuckerberg by depicting him as a lizard person in the video, fuck! I’ll admit, I may be missing context, but even if you avoid the antisemitic/QAnon implications of “Zuckerberg that dude, lizard do do-ru,” the chorus’s lyrics still sound awful and force the image of two of the worst men alive into my brain, thereby sending me crashing back to Earth and ruining any chance of my reaching the stratosphere. And I deserve better than that. I’m not a SpaceX rocket.
[3]
Nortey Dowuona: Bread is apparently a good trading piece in negotiations with aliens. Thanks, Babymint!
[7]
Alex Clifton: Clearly we’re not meant to take this too seriously — the video indicates as much, with a “galaxy fart, fart away” and a chorus of out-of-tune recorders — but I can’t stop myself from being hung up on the line “love me up and down like I’m Baby Yoda.” Baby Yoda is not sexy! Please don’t try to make regular Yoda sexy, either! I think Babymint are trying to emphasize Baby Yoda’s cuteness, but I’m pedantic enough that this just doesn’t work for me. I think the mark of a good novelty song is that it goes down easy even when it’s being weird; you’re not meant to think too hard about what’s happening, and if there’s something jarring in there, it’s for comedic effect. By and large the song is fine, but it just misses the mark. I’m fine with laser noises but, for some reason, evoking Baby Yoda is where I draw the line.
[5]
Leah Isobel: “BB Gals of the Galaxy” toggles between naiveté and laser-focused professionalism, optimism and nihilism, love and destruction; I’d say it feels manic, but its switchbacks are precise and controlled, a constellation of every human feeling. “I’ll be your doom,” Babymint sings. To feel is to know death.
[8]
I have to be honest, more than half the score I gave this song is due to them giving no fucks enough to include a horrible music meme in this video not once but twice.