I’m not going to review this song because I don’t want to be unnecessarily mean, but listening to rookie group BLINGONE’s re-creation of KARA’s immortal Mister makes for a fascinating case study and comparison between K-pop generations. It answers the question nobody had but everybody wants to know: What if a classic second-gen song had been released today amidst our current musical trends?
The answer is predictably sorrowful. Rather than cast Mister within a series of blazing, high-energy synths, BLINGONE reinvent it with the herky jerky drum-and-bass rhythms currently flooding the market. The song becomes almost unrecognizable, its iconic, triumphant melodies reduced to a series of chirps and squiggles. As the instrumental continues to drop out, the song loses all momentum, making its slower moments drag and faster moments feel hopelessly out of place. It’s disjointed and difficult to dance to, more obsessed with creating three-second highlight clips than fleshing out a full song. And speaking of full songs, the runtime for this new version has been cut by over thirty seconds, which is amazing because BLINGONE’s version feels about ten times as long.
Again, it’s just a fascinating case study.
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
The way I literally replied to your original tweet mentioning the last sentence of your last paragraph 5 minutes ago 😭😭😭 and the ugly chuckle I had when I saw your notifications pop up 😭😭😭😭
But seriously, imagine the second gen classics released today. What if Into The New World was shortened to 2 minutes and 30 seconds? Maybe we wouldn’t get that dance break, bridge and the final chorus with that iconic key change. What if Gee was shortened in a way that the hooks was just “Gee gee gee gee gee gee” in an airy tone? What if Abracadabra’s hooks was also shortened and instead of that iconic sing talk with that electro beat, we get a bored, ASMR-like sing talk with muted synths? What if Step’s propulsive disco production was replaced by unoriginal drum and bass? That sounds so dystopian oh my god…
I suffered thinking about these, and I decided that I cannot suffer alone with these thoughts ( ◠‿◠ )♡ (and yes, the kaomoji’s intentional)
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last sentence of first paragraph*
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anyways this remains the best cover and new take on a kpop classic
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I personally prefer Dreams Come True by aespa
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As a standalone song it’s great but s.e.s’s version is one of my all-time favorites so i had high expectations. Aespa’s version just didn’t have the mystical and dreamlike aura and soft vocals that the 98’s version had. Still is better than most covers other groups released
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I have a feeling that this will become more of a trend: 5th gen artists covering 2nd gen classics (example, RIIZE, X-Unit, etc.) . I just hope that for Nick’s sanity, no one dares touch The Chaser.
What more is there to say than what Nick wrote, it’s truly a disservice to the original artists and music. Companies should withhold selling rights to remake a song if it’s going to suck, imo.
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Also their voices are weirdly mixed trying to achieve that wistful Y2K popular sound.
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Imagine, The Chaser, but with instead of that high-tempo dance beat, we get that tinny trap percussion that seems to be making its way back in most bg songs, some uninspired bass, everything seems hella aggressive for no reason, so yep, the chorus is aggressive shouting and chanting instead of melodic and soaring and maybe to truly traumatize Nick (if he’s able to survive this so far), towards the end of the song, we’d get a silly “THE CHASERRRRRRRR” scream in the same fashion as the one from xikers’ Koong
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Seems like another good opportunity to link this evergreen post from 2019:
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6 years and these producers have not learned a single thing from this I fear 😞 (although the producers of VVV kinda comes close imo)
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Nick and kpop peaked with that post lmao
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this is craaaazy lmao 😭😭😭 I think these new gen idols should stop attempting to cover classics entirely unless the original songwriters/producers are involved.
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wtf is this 😭
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This is obviously a travesty but I do feel terrible for them. The video has less than 4k views… I don’t know how they even got the rights to perform this song tbh
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By the way, I read your post incorrectly with “take” as a noun, so was expecting multiple takes.
With that in mind, let’s appreciate some non-tragic recent takes on Mister by Kara!
+ bonus STEP!
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STAYC nails it with much respect to the original 👍
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the dance also somehow feels more anemic, which is especially noticeable given the standards for choreo difficulty have been increasing over time
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And with this, the standard of vocals also decreased a lot. Now, obviously I can’t expect everyone to be like all of CSJH The Grace or Chen, but still it’s depressing seeing how rare solid melodies are nowadays alongside live-singing 🫠
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Lol fair enough. I personally feel like there have always been at least one or two clunky singers in most kpop groups, but the “best of the best” have gotten worse in quality (also singing live has become less common/more technologically fakeable)
That being said kpop songs aren’t that… demanding for the most part? Or at least the delivery expectation isn’t as high for like an opera singer. I like a nice-sounding voice as much as anybody but someone can go from a 4/10 vocals to ~7.5/10 with editing alone, so…
To be super clear about my preferences, I don’t listen to kpop for super hard dancing or super knock-it-out-of-the-park live singing. Both are great, icing on the cake. The reason I pointed out the dance in particular is since the original is SO iconic and also just unapologetically sexy, and they don’t go anywhere near that here. So what’s the point of the song? “Light, fluffy & cute” alone feels like a disservice to “Mister.” They wouldn’t even need to make it sexy, something confident and powerful like K-Tigers would be interesting and suffice imo.
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Are you going to rate KPop Demon Hunters Songs .
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Haha you’re like the fiftieth person to ask me this. Probably not.
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are you going to rate The KPop Demon Hunters songs. Saja Boys and HUNTR/X songs are very popular and very good .
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Why did you ask me this question twice?
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Nick btw have you heard of the film kpop demon hunters and will you be reviewing those songs btw
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Nick are you going to review the songs from kpop demon hunters?
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nick are you going to revagina the thongs from kporn dildo humpers?
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😭
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I hate to be that guy but at least half of the bad choices production-wise and half of the lifelessness here, imho, come from these kids having literally no lungs to even try to embarrass themselves with this song in a karaoke room let alone even attempt to produce a cover of it.
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listening to the original a bunch of times to cleanse my ears 🥀
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Listening to the audio made me realize how just engrained I have the Japanese version of the song, lol
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The way it had to be a bunch of times to completely cleanse it. Speaks volumes how off the remake is!
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no doubt about it that the original is better. I actual feel the urge to dance to it. However, I don’t think it’s that bad. I think it represents this generation’s sound pretty well. WE don’t care for that because we were lucky enough to be around when singers could really sing (globally…) and didn’t need to over compensate with other aspects of a release, but the kids may be able to get into it. At the very least they didn’t mess with the melodies and I’ve always believed the key change at the end of Mister was pretty overindulgent
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That’s what makes it such a fascinating case study, though. It’s rare that we can directly compare musical trends of two different eras on the exact same song. As you said, this version is SO representative of this generation. Whether it’s “bad” or not is entirely subjective, but I certainly think it makes a lot of dull choices that don’t serve the song at all.
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I wouldn’t say the remake is terrible, but there’s just nothing to it, it’s like expecting to eat a burger and eating air instead.
Not that they’re dead but if I was Sweetune I’d be rolling in my grave.
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honestly it couldve been far worse Like if this had been released like 4-5 yrs ago it wouldve been a itzy from temu girl crush boom gratata rework which i dont even wanna imagine
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Nick: I’m not going to review this song because I don’t want to be unnecessarily mean
Also Nick: Names the post “How to Ruin a Classic K-pop Song”
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That’s Nick being a-c-c-u-r-a-t-e, not mean 🤷♀️.
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I don’t think it’s that bad, just worse than the original. I still like Bubblegum and especially Kiss and Call by Blingone. If you want to listen to this group, I would recommend these songs instead of this cover. May nugu groups get the recognition they deserve 😭🙏🏼
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“It’s disjointed and difficult to dance to, more obsessed with creating three-second highlight clips than fleshing out a full song.”
This pretty much sums up my issue with K-pop nowadays. It feels like groups mainly release songs as a way to bolster their social media presence by giving people clips to share on TikTok. The music feels like a afterthought. The most infuriating part is that I don’t understand why it has to be one or the other. Can’t they be “trendy” and have decent music, or are those thing mutually exclusive somehow?
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Please, no more remakes! I couldn’t enjoy the 2025 SMTOWN album because of it. The only song I liked from that album is the sole original song “Thank You”.
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The percussion sounds like a cat walked across the setting buttons. They skipped the key change. But most of all, they did not do the classic butt dance with suspenders. The one custom made for the male gaze. (Where is Xeno?) It is such a classic dance move in kpop, it would be like leaving out the hand rubbing in Sorry Sorry, or the slinky shuffle side hand snap in Mirotic, or the shuffle step in T-ara Lovey Dovey, or the hip sway in Brown Eyed Girls Abracadabra etc etc.
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