Wednesday, January 15th, 2025

BINI – Salamin, Salamin

Next up, Darj introduces us to Manila’s girl group ambassadors…

BINI - Salamin, Salamin
[Video]
[6.70]

Jonathan Bradley: This dropped a month before “Espresso,” for those tracking 2024’s disco-froth timeline; if this sounds like a caffeinated take on Sabrina Carpenter, that’s purely down to the confidence and the zeitgeist. But “Salamin, Salamin” sounds like throwback idol-pop to me, and a mondegreen points me in the right direction. “Kailan niya ba ‘ko papansinin?” the Bini girls ask in the hook, but my anglophone ear caught “…Bubble Pop,” and I hear in this Filipina group some of the ebullient camaraderie and easy interplay of the K-pop of a decade-plus ago. There are contemporary touches too, though: I like the dexterous rapping, untouched by the self-consciousness of drilled professionalism. “Trapped in this fairytale, but I don’t want to wake up in this dream,” is a great glitter sprinkle of a bridge that leads into a tongue twister chorus. This is a girlish song about a crush, but it doesn’t shrink that feeling into diary entries and whispers. The line I heard as a HyunA allusion actually means “when will he notice me?” As soon as he opens his ears, I expect.
[8]

Melody Esme: “Forget Me Nots” slap bass combined with sweet bubblegum hooks and a fantasy/fairytale(/Satanic????) love lyric reminiscent of Little Mix’s “Black Magic.” This may be the first P-pop song I’ve ever heard, and it makes me want to explore more.
[7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Can’t form a coherent thought about this — overwhelmed by the brightness of the bass tone.
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: Foregrounding the bass guitar in the mix is such a simple decision to make, but it earns the group some major goodwill by demonstrating that even the cutesiest of bubblegum disco-pop doesn’t have to skimp on the genre’s ancestral foundations. It also makes it easier to execute the girl group two-step of casting feminine passivity as a latent superpower – “I’m ready to be called your princess” is some seriously assertive passive voice.
[8]

Nortey Dowuona: John Michael Conchada, the writer and vocal arranger of this sweet little bop. Range: what would music be like without it? Don’t sleep on fellow arranger Paula Rose Alcasid either.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The opening synth tinkles and the slap bass evoke Carly Rae Jepsen if she had existed during the sophisti-pop circa 1987. The rest of the track follows suit.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Relentless okayness.
[3]

Alex Clifton: As I’m in my 30s, I’m not the target audience for this, but I’ll always have a soft spot for bubblegum pop. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel with a “sigh, my crush is so dreamy” song, and BINI do a nice job creating something sweet and inoffensive, yet distinctive enough to stand out from a crowd. Adding a bonus point because I love the Y2K/Lisa Frank aesthetics in the music video. Does that count as pandering? Probably, but as a millennial, I’m not used to being pandered to by younger generations, so I’ll take it.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Genuinely can’t remember the last time I heard a bassline like that — in terms of sound, in terms of what it’s playing, in terms of how essential it is to the joie de vivre — in a song like this. It works so well it makes me faintly sad it feels like such an outlier. 
[8]

Leah Isobel: The post-NewJeans girl group norm is soft austerity: twinkly, plush exteriors belying songs that with foundations of cold metal and grey concrete. Hooks are blunt and weaponized, rhythm tracks are skittering and harsh. All extraneous elements are bled out to better deliver a pop-mechanical rush. By comparison, “Salamin, Salamin,” with its thick layer of bubblegum frosting and seemingly endless length and honest-to-god double chorus, feels positively decadent. It doesn’t beg for attention but rather assumes that the audience wants to care, that its fantasy is actually aspirational. How nice!
[8]

Reader average: [8] (1 vote)

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