KEEMBO’s Love Me 4 Me caps off an underwhelming week of K-pop releases. I’d be lying if I said my mind was really on K-pop anyway, given the events of this first week of 2021. But, I do appreciate when the industry kicks off the new year with a bang. I still remember when SM Entertainment hit us with Girls’ Generation’s I Got A Boy on the very first day of January 2013. It was like a throw-down-the-gauntlet, “can you top this?” introduction to what would go on to be a very strong year in music.
This has nothing to do with KEEMBO, of course, but the fact that I’m willing to spend a third of my review on barely-connected events shows just how little I have to say about a song like Love Me 4 Me. The duo continue to work with producers Sweetune on this track – though interestingly, Han Jae-ho and Kim Seung-soo are back to being credited by their own names on MelOn instead of the moniker Sweetune. And as KEEMBO’s singles have rolled out, they’re starting to rely less and less on the layered synth sound that always felt like a Sweetune trademark.
Love Me 4 Me is a pretty song, and the girls’ vocal performance is reliably polished and enjoyable. But, these kind of gentle, mid-tempo tracks have never been for me. They paint a mood and vibe, but the actual songcraft feels rote and expected. Aside from some welcome touches of brass, the groove is fairly unassuming and generic. Having really fallen for music in the mid-90’s when this style of laid-back pop was ubiquitous, it’s a sound that I find quite nostalgic. But, there are far more interesting and dynamic tracks within this genre.
| Hooks | 7 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7.25 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Hey, At least January 11th will be flourishing with comebacks!
Also, I have a feeling , January will be the third month in a row to hit your 8 culminative scores…. give how consistent all these comebacks we’ve been getting have been.
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Hello! January 23rd Yan here! Jan 8th Yan, you’re an idiot…
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Ooh I like this!
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For those interested, I have posted my 10-6 favorite songs of 2020 today! Please check it out!
https://108ent.blogspot.com/2021/01/top-50-songs-of-2020-10-6.html
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I know I must respect everyone’s opinions… but “Run” at 7th place seems awfully strange to me.
But each to their own!
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I took forever to get into Run, or Sexy Zone for that matter. But I am doing international releases for the top 50, and this hurt Run a bit on the rankings (easily top 5 for J-Pop). Just curious, what is your top 10 overall songs of 2020? I expect Pump it Up and Run for sure!
Thanks for reading the post 🙂
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I don’t know, but for now it would go like this….
10. Sixtones – Imitation Rain
09. Miyavi – Bang
08. High Dandism – Laughter
07. Stray Kids – T.O.P
06. Onf – New World
05. MLK – Winding Road
04. Yurina Hirate – Reason To Dance
03. Buzz – Sun and Love
02. Lucy – Flare
01. Sexy Zone – Run
In case any of you haven’t noticed, I have a thing for songs which take me on an adventure, and my favorite songs have always capitalized it on that. I want Songs to represent their story musically in a meaningfully, not in some weird concept or whatever….
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I noticed that bahubali review of yours and I just wanna announce something as an Indian.
Go search in youtube, Bahubali Shield Catapult and I swear, if that won’t laugh at that, I don’t what will.
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Oh man, I remember going to the theaters and seeing Bahubali 2 (I follow Indian, Chinese, Korean and Western pop culture quite a lot), and seeing that scene. It was always somewhat off, compared to the rest of somewhat-realistic stunts and mechanisms throughout the duology (somewhat is a key word here), but I love it for that. It is one of those intellect-less moments in the movie, but still really epic lol!
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I thought the scene was hella entertaining, but I showed it to sonny boy and he was less impressed. He said “How is that possible. This is boring.”
Kids these days.
I would add that shrugging sign made up with characters from the keyboard but that would take me an hour to figure out or find, so just imagine a keyboard emoji shrug right here.
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I also love it when songs tell a story, and your top 10 is really good!
In fact, I think Run is let down as it is a post-journey almost, near the climax, where you know that you will win. It is a good ending, but I prefer the heart.
You actually have some songs you may or may not see in my top 5, so look forward to that tomorrow!
So happy to see Miyavi get that love he needs!
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My guesses will be Lucy’s Flare , Miyavi’s Bang (It will be your number 1) and High Dandism’s Laughter
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Let us see 🙂
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As for Lucy’s Flare, it is more symphony than pop, and thus I excluded it from the list 😦
It may get some special award though, and I may have to allow symphonic pop on the list if Lucy continue to ace it.
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To calm my nerves with this week’s events, I have resorted to playing craptastic “relaxing soft piano with rain” instrumentals on youtube. Its not working, so I think I must switch to Led Zeppelin set on 11.
This song, the song itself, sounds like a B-side song for s B-list R&B singer circa mid80’s to mid90’s. So why did they pick this one, of all songs to do? There is a continuum of writing and performing songs between “I am doing this for me as an artist” and “I am doing this for my fans”. The ideal is right in the middle, the best of both, doing it for me and my fans, everyone is happy. I don’t know where to place this one on that line. Is there an early 90’s R&B revival that I am missing that the music buying public is consuming in droves? Or is this really the kind of artists they want to be?
I really don’t know, so I will just say simply “Bad song choice”.
Their voices are lovely as always.
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This sounds decent enough but not quite something I’d listen to much. I’d personally give it a 7/10.
In unrelated news, it appears that SM will be giving Yunho short MVs for the b-sides of his upcoming EP (similar to what they did to NCT and EXO-SC) and that’s something to look forward to. You can never go wrong when it comes to TVXQ. Hoping some of the other artists under the label get short MVs as well, especially SHINee next month.
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This song is very gentle and soothing. It doesn’t really draw me in from the begining, but the post chorus instrumentals really hit me in the heart. A nice gentle song with a beautiful story.
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To be honest when this was released I thought it was pretty regular, now I’m obsessed with the synth background and the vocals, it gets better with every listen
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