Earlier this year, Kiss Of Life preceded their debut with a series of solo tracks. Though they were of varying quality, these songs did a nice job introducing the members and building interest in the group. Funny enough, I found their actual debut less successful than many of these pre-releases. Follow-up single Bad News struggles in a similar way.
The first thing that strikes me about this track is its strong vocal. The melody retains much of the cursed sing-talk / nursery rhyme construction that’s plagued this generation of K-pop, but the girls perform it with gusto. It’s refreshing to hear such full-throated delivery and this approach compliments the production’s bluesy twang.
If only this performance had been tethered to a stronger song! Bad News is perfectly fine, but its taunting melodic structure quickly grows tired. The chorus takes a standard blues approach but filters it through a cutesy lens that doesn’t work for me. At worst, the song feels too gimmicky for its own good. Kiss Of Life are clearly overflowing with talent and manage to elevate subpar material. I hope they’re given a song as great as they are in the near future.
| Hooks | 7 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7.25 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
I hope they get another song like Sugarcoat. This is fine but no where near the greatness of sugarcoat
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I sadly don’t see this one growing on me like Shhh did. it’s a fine song but unmemorable.
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Holy moly this was good, honestly didn’t hear no talk singing or nursery rhymes, sounds like a damn good western country pop
Not as energetic as I like my kpop, but full marks for being different than entire industry in terms of sound for title tracks
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Decent title with the American style well-depicted. This actually outperforms English releases in the market by a margin.
Album can be monotonic but still pretty strong overall, mid 8s in my opinion.
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EP kinda slapped for me, I heard some country, jazz, swing. Very nostalgic sound. Guess I’m just in the mood listening to this in the park sun bathing
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This was a bit unmemorable to me. I agree that it feels gimmicky, it tried to make moments but none of them stuck with me. For anyone wanting another Sugarcoat, listen to Nobody Knows in the album IMMEDIATELY. It slaps hard.
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The tracks in the album reminds me alot of Red Velvet’s RBB. Hope the title track grows on me and this album will be a no-skip.
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Bad News works for me. Basically it’s more of a B-side material, but there’s enough tweaks that made it tolerable for many and enjoyable for some, like I do.
The album B-sides are, to my surprise, better than expected.
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