Despite losing two members and various controversies, EXO is still one of the most popular K-pop boy groups, at least until Big Bang makes its eventual return. Thanks to its immense popularity, just about whatever EXO releases is bound in some way to be quite successful. With this sort of safety net and the fact that […]
https://kultscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/57487-3051191.jpg15203000Joe Palmerhttps://kultscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/KULTSCENE-LOGO-2018-TRANSPARENT-RED.pngJoe Palmer2015-03-30 17:07:142015-04-20 04:25:51EXO’s ‘Call Me Baby’ Song Review
Kisses and kissing aren’t always openly talked about in the K-pop music scene. But there are many songs about first kisses and kissing in general. They can be as innocent as a peck on the cheek or as steamy as a full on lip-to-lip, tongue-to-tongue contact. Sometimes these kissing songs aren’t as blatant as others, […]
Despite losing two members and various controversies, EXO is still one of the most popular K-pop boy groups, at least until Big Bang makes its eventual return. Thanks to its immense popularity, just about whatever EXO releases is bound in some way to be quite successful. With this sort of safety net and the fact that […]
https://kultscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/57487-3051191.jpg15203000Joe Palmerhttps://kultscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/KULTSCENE-LOGO-2018-TRANSPARENT-RED.pngJoe Palmer2015-03-30 17:07:142015-04-20 04:25:51EXO’s ‘Call Me Baby’ Song Review
Kisses and kissing aren’t always openly talked about in the K-pop music scene. But there are many songs about first kisses and kissing in general. They can be as innocent as a peck on the cheek or as steamy as a full on lip-to-lip, tongue-to-tongue contact. Sometimes these kissing songs aren’t as blatant as others, […]
Despite losing two members and various controversies, EXO is still one of the most popular K-pop boy groups, at least until Big Bang makes its eventual return. Thanks to its immense popularity, just about whatever EXO releases is bound in some way to be quite successful. With this sort of safety net and the fact that they are an SM Entertainment act, a company known to be innovative, I still expect them to go a relatively safe route. This is probably because their safest song, Growl was also their most successful and because SM need some stability during this turbulent time.
Call Me Daddy, sorry, Call Me Baby therefore was surprising to me in its understated yet strangely structured whole. It is in short, a new version of Growl with a few added bells and whistles upon first glance. Yet further inspection offers some more unique aspects to the song.
Call Me Baby jettisons the genre and crazy structure bending of EXO’s previous songs like MAMA and Wolf, and keeps the simple instrumentation of Growl with a slightly updated song structure. This seems quite fitting given this comeback has been seen as a kind of rebirth for EXO after Luhan and Kris’ departure. The newest title song holds onto EXO’s most successful elements and lets go of now irrelevant parts.
The most notable element from before is the RnB beats that carries the song; it is instantly recognisable and fun to any listener. The horn riff that follows it is equally satisfying and recalls the earlier work of Justin Timberlake. The horns accompanied with the strings, which come in later, are the extent of the aforementioned bells and whistles. Instrumentally and musically, Call Me Baby has little else to offer listeners looking for a new style of music from EXO.
Luckily for EXO and its fans, Call Me Baby is also the group’s most interesting single vocally. As a K-pop fan I can’t really complain that there aren’t enough techniques used in songs, as K-pop is a very diverse genre of music.
But if I were to ask K-pop acts to focus on certain elements of vocalization, it would be harmonies or vocal rounds. While Call Me Baby doesn’t exactly use these, the song highlights the members vocal talents and matches them to their respective strengths. The song also has varied vocals all at the same time as melding the members vocals together in new ways, ranging from the falsetto chorus “call me baby” to contrasting raps with screams. It adds a great deal of interest to a song that at first listen could have been left alone and seems like a very simplistic choice to be a group’s comeback song.
The chorus, if you can call it that, also takes on a slightly more complex form. Depending on how you see it the chorus either kicks in very early or has a long pre-chorus which contains the “call me baby” parts. It all makes for an interesting structure as there is no discernible chorus or hook whatever way you look at it. This again provides a slightly more challenging listen than first anticipated, something which SM Entertainment specialises in (see all of the songs from f(x)’s Pink Tape).
Call Me Baby has a number of things that warrant more than one listen but does that make it a great song?
Rating
Call Me Baby has the elements of a great, traditional SM song and a great weird SM song but comes out on the other end not really shining with either. It exists in a kind of dull middle-ground with nothing but a few interesting features to prop it up. It doesn’t play with the form enough to make a comment on pop music and doesn’t have a good enough hook to be an ear worm. Lyrically it has nothing to offer either, just another guy pining for a girl. That being said I really like the vocal contrasting and some other stuff so it’s not the worst EXO single. But it doesn’t really seem like a title track either.
What’s your opinion of Call Me Baby? Leave your thoughts on the comment section below and be sure to subscribe to the site and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr to keep up with all of our posts.
https://kultscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/57487-3051191.jpg15203000Joe Palmerhttps://kultscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/KULTSCENE-LOGO-2018-TRANSPARENT-RED.pngJoe Palmer2015-03-30 17:07:142015-04-20 04:25:51EXO’s ‘Call Me Baby’ Song Review
Kisses and kissing aren’t always openly talked about in the K-pop music scene. But there are many songs about first kisses and kissing in general. They can be as innocent as a peck on the cheek or as steamy as a full on lip-to-lip, tongue-to-tongue contact. Sometimes these kissing songs aren’t as blatant as others, but one thing we know for sure is our K-pop idols love to sing about kissing.
Like many before her, Jeon Hyosung used her solo career as a way to show off her large, um, charms. Her solo venture turned out to be just as successful as bandmate Jieun’s but offered something completely different. Goodnight Kiss is an hypnotic trap lullaby for a boy whom Hyosung sings to goodnight. Yet she clearly doesn’t really want to go to sleep but to just kiss and kiss him. Updating fairytales and lullabies is popular these days and this song does a better job of it than most. The song comes off as a reworked lullaby to perfectly suit Hyosung’s sexy image. It starts off relatively innocent but becomes sexier with each part before finally hitting that trap drop. We forget about the lullaby element after a while as it becomes stranger and sexier. It all comes together to create something quite sophisticated and shows that given the right material Hyosun could become a soloist on par with Ga-In.
Dara’s Kiss is filled with ridiculous yet catchy engrish lyrics, yet there’s one line that I’ll occasionally find myself singing to in public; I just wanna kiss, I never wanna miss. Kiss is a fun and rather playful song whereas the music video, which features actor Lee Minho and if you look closely, Kim Woo Bin is also featured, is rather on the dramatic side; I guess that’s what happens when you feature actors in your music video, it suddenly turns into a short drama! Aside from the dramatic acting from both Dara and Lee Minho, the overall production was entertaining and to me, it felt like a commercial!
— Tam
If we talk about kisses, what’s better than a french kiss? Hyuna’s song French Kiss recounts a story at a scandalous party. Hyuna meets a guy and it;s like love at first sight, or maybe lust at first sight. Right then and there she wants to be only with him, alone. The chorus is very addicting and the part where Hyuna whispers “Let’s french kiss” sounds so seductive and sexy. It almost makes the listeners feel that you are the man she lusts over and she is whispering those words to them. The song has a great beat and it’s a great song to just dance let loose and make out.
— Alejandro
Rather than celebrating love, Super Junior‘s My Love, My Kiss, My Heart mourns it. The song is the classic tale of missing an ex lover post break up while reluctantly trying to move on. You know, when it still hurts. The boys lament the love lost, saying they will bury their love, kiss and heart through a heartfelt ballad.
X’s are for kisses, sings EXO in XOXO. The song is an adorable, upbeat, jazzy ode to the woman EXO loves, filled with sweet lines about dreaming of hugging and kissing the one you love. EXO’s vocals really shine in the song, with enough lines for EXO’s multitude of members to express their own individual vocal colors.
— Tamar
miss A’s Hush actually uses the word ‘kiss’ in the chorus. The ladies sing about their steamy wants and desires. And at the top of the list is kissing, which is a great way to get to know someone intimately. Hush takes things a few steps further than kissing, but the sexy ladies of miss A know what they want and clearly depict all of that in this song. Aside from the content of the song, Hush has an infectious chorus and sultry dance moves perfectly executed by the quartet.
— Tara
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