Today marks the debut of Cube Entertainment’s Nowadays. They follow in the footsteps of agency seniors Beast, BTOB and Pentagon, each of which debuted with a song very in keeping with their K-pop era. By all accounts, we’re now in K-pop’s fifth generation, but the boisterous OoWee feels more in line with the industry’s past few years.
I’m pretty sensitive to sound, and particular sounds tend to set me on edge. K-pop boys shouting in unison has slowly become one of those triggers, making it hard to enjoy any song that employs this technique. Unfortunately, shouty choruses seem to be sticking around, allowing for difficult choreography without all that pesky singing getting in the way. OoWee is the umpteenth boy group track to center itself around such a chant. I guess I should have known from its onomatopoeia title.
OoWee is fine. It tells me nothing about Nowadays beside the fact they can do whatever everyone else is doing. The rap is fine. The beat is fine. The attitude is fine. However, there’s not a single element here that makes me lean in closer. It’s pre-packaged K-pop of the most cynical kind, covering its lack of ideas with a slick performance and quirky music video.
| Hooks | 6 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 6 |
| RATING | 7 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
I wish that the song wasn’t all rapping and talking but you know what, I’m not complaining after what my ears went through the past couple days, HINT HINT SHEESH BABYMONSTER😍🔫
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Sounds like an average P1H-song with the chanty chorus. Ratings is just, that’s all I’mma say about this song.
P.S, they should have sampled Cupcakke if they were gonna name the title “OoWee”. What wasted potential, the song would have been no. 1 in my heart.
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Ofc, the “P.S” is a joke (but ngl, it’d be unironically iconic if someone sampled a Cupcakke song, idk, it’d be fun to see)
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ok, first of all, the person who wrote this column knows nothing about music. The uniqueness of the song is what makes it great. Kpop needs a unique approach to continue being a big trend within the fans and captivate new listeners and fans. This type of criticism reminds me of the judges in those competition TV shows like American idol and America’s got talent, they always look for what’s the same all the time and it’s absolutely lame and boring because they always glorify the same singing acts that have an awful low pitch and scream the high pitch and they look at it as if it’s some inspiration and the world should sing that way and when that one or two people in the show sing somethingtl thats completelydifferent from the rest, they get looked at like weird people. Well it’s not, not all music should be the same within it’s genre, pop/kpop music is basically all the genres in one and can be mixed up is many different ways and Cube did just that with Nowadays. The key word is Nowa days here, not fairies or princesses. It’s supposed to be a bit dark and unusual but still making sense and showing a good ability to show this is another side of kpop without it just being one sided like the many groups with a more similar musical context.
Most in the comments are also tone deaf, yeah yeah to you it’s awful because you’re used to the same old kpop songs… what do yall expect? For kpop to have 500 new groups within the next 10 years and every group sounding the same? Groups that are breaking the typical kpop barrier are groups like Stray Kids, ATBO, Xikers and Nowadays because they’re all giving us something unique and different from what I call just another kpop group. Oo-Wee is a nice song and the other tracks in the album are pretty nice as well, as someone who’s been in music for over a decade I know good or high potential music when I see it. Most current western rap isn’t it because it’s all the same.
You know what new group I would actually day it’s a letdown despite the diversity? Ateez. Why are they a letdown? Because they sound like every other typical kpop group! They also have choreo like every other average kpop group. I’m a KQ fan because that company has the better groups in kpop but Ateez didn’t have that spark. It’s not bad, it’s just nothing new. I watched the MVs and their debut in the Block B concert but it wasn’t really something that I would say it’s new and amazing, even my non kpop fan brother enjoyed Block B more and thought Ateez was a cover group or the cast of 2 Girls 1 Cup.
That’s what’s wrong with most kpop fans today, no knowledge in the art of music. It’s great so get over it, Nowadays is unique and isn’t going to be like every other group, they can sing, dance, rap and pop very well, Cube is in a right direction with this after the massive impact from Pentagon.
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LOL
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delulu is not always the solulu🤧😔😩
-Grandma Deb 😍
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This should be a copypasta!
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i stole it from a hate comment in the sheesh review lol
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you’re a genius
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I was just going to go with “It’s fine.” and move on with my day.
But you have prepared a masterpiece long form, even if the form is borrowed. Thank you, thank you for this.
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Look. Sometimes, on some days, one simply can’t give a chance to a group whose name is Nowadays. I just can’t with these group names, I’m sorry but this is becoming a reddit username exhibit at this point.
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It almost makes one wish for the FPS WRC HPL ZXP QRT acronym days.
I just can’t with ILLIT. Ill Lit? Illicit? Eye Light? Ill eet? (Yes I did read somewhere what it is supposed to be, but it is not the first or third or even the tenth thing that comes to mind.)
…
Still waiting on Sp_ace. Sp_ace would be awesome. Nick! Next song you do, can you call it Sp_ace.
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Sp_ace is the group we’re all waiting for, or at least song😆. (Ngl it’s better than Nowadays) The fandom could be da~shes or something like that lol
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Sp_ace is the group we’re all waiting for, or at least song😆. (Ngl it’s better than Nowadays) The fandom could be da~shes or something like that lol
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A Cube group debuting with a song called “OoWee” is setting high expectations, not least because of what feels like a callback to BTOB’s “WOW.”
Needless to say such expectations were not met. Shrug.
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Sounds exactly like a NCT Dream reject. The boys pulled it off pretty good but the actual song seems like such a blatant rip off
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Has anyone heard of nowadays song “ticket” from the same album? They just released an mv for it two days ago and I think it’s got a cute summer vacation vibe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsI9Gbj4wTs&pp=ygUbdGlja2V0IG5vd2FkYXlzIG11c2ljIHZpZGVv
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