Mamamoo and its sub-units never met an onomatopoeia they didn’t love. Their music has increasingly become characterized by cartoonish hooks placed over funky backbeats. Hints of their retro, jazzy debut-era sound still creep up in the vocal delivery, but their work has become mired in a sense of novelty that belies their obvious talent.
My concern with new single dangdang (댕댕) echoes my thoughts on most Mamamoo-related uptempos of the past few years. It’s good clean fun, but the song takes one idea and runs it into the ground. As much as I complain about the ever-shortening running time of K-pop tracks, some songs could benefit from brevity. At almost three-and-a-half minutes, dangdang feels like it stretches on forever — despite the best efforts of a climactic key change and the ladies’ game performance.
On the plus side, I dig the twangy guitar that drives much of the instrumental. It makes me curious how Mamamoo would sound on a straight-up country track. dangdang is almost a K-pop hoedown anyway. Why not go full bore in this direction?
| Hooks | 7 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7.5 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Add another one to the list of songs that sound much better at a faster clip.
For this one, a full 1.25x is perfect. It is actually an almost great song at 1.25x, maybe even a full point higher.
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Lol, it actually did.
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In my opinion, the key change ruined the song for me.
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Really bored with this song, how can my #1 vocal group keep doing this to me?! I keep expecting crazy belts and riffs but this subunit has not impressed me, not has the group for past couple comebacks. Their recent concert and live vocals were so life changing though…😞
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I feel like Mamamoo has really been phoning it in since about 2017.
“Here’s another song with the girls cooing softly, and repeating nonsense words, hope you like it!” Every song is that.
Like, a really talented group and they’re just not doing anything with their voices?
The key change would be fine if it had literally any build to it.
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If anyone likes a funky vibe and melancholic guitar, this is my favorite song from the EP:
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The song is bad. A lot of attitude but the essential 👎.
I hope you will review this song down here. It is one of the better releases of July imo.
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It’s one of those songs that’s cute, pleasant, nothing wrong with it. It’s also not something I’ve never heard before. I’d play it in the background.
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Hmm, to me, the vibes feel similar to early fun Mamamoo releases. It works for me, especially as the title track, and I get more of the more interesting vocal tracks from the rest of the EP. You mentioned country, so you might be interested in Solar’s OST ‘Blue Bird’
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