Spooky season is fast approaching, which means a song titled “Thriller” has me thinking of one thing only. Instead of an MJ zombie dance-a-thon, this Thriller brings us the return of girl group BADVILLAIN. It’s been almost a year since we’ve heard from them on this blog, which might as well be a century when it comes to rookie groups. Thankfully, they’ve re-emerged with their strongest title track yet.
This Thriller has no chance of standing up to its classic namesake, but it doesn’t try to replicate those Halloween vibes. Instead, BADVILLAIN deliver a catchy hip-hop track with an incessant beat that pulls plenty of drama from a relatively simple arrangement. A great beat takes you a long way in K-pop — especially when you don’t get fussy with it by adding a bunch of needless stops, starts and energy shifts. Once you get my head nodding, the trick is to keep it nodding. Thriller has no problem doing this.
The song bounds along the blend of rap, sing-talk and truncated melody powering so many other modern K-pop tracks, but the phrasing fits the rhythm and rides the beat in a satisfying way. I love the layers of percussion here, especially when they’re ornamented with horror-show strings. Thriller‘s repetitive nature makes me worry about its longevity, but for now this is a very pleasant surprise.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 9 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 9 |
| RATING | 8.5 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Oh I think we are far apart on this one. I think it is dull, repetitive, and unoriginal. Thriller rhyming with killer? What’s with the weird moan that punctuates the end of each line in the chorus.
It’s all about that low note drone in the chorus, that is the hook. Its a pretty good hook, actually, something like has built songs in the past. Sorry Sorry, Mr Simple, for example. Complication is that I am not sure if any of them is really singing it. G3 down to E3. It sounds autotuned physically down once, thickened, then copy and pasted. I mean, that is fine if all one wants is a dance crew performance.
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If that’s the way they made this song, they might as well outsource the whole thing to GenAI. I wonder if it’s not already (partly) happening in the industry.
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The song has grown on me a bit since yesterday. It sounds better on the earbuds than on the computer speakers, so we shall see how it sounds in the car. The true test is the car speakers.
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I live a carless life in a city apartment, so for me its headphones or nothing! That said, what did the car test result in..?
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It was fine. When it comes around on the shuffle I don’t skip it, but I don’t seek it out.
That weird moan sound still bothers me, so much so that I moan along with the weird moan rather than singing the song.
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i’m not sure what to think about the song, but the camerawork and transitions were really clean
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For some reason I simultaneously like and dislike this song and idk why. Maybe I’ll come to a conclusion once the month ends
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Well gee whiz. Imagining my 20 year old self discovering this mv.
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this was a serve. normally, i don’t like these sing-talk songs, but i agree so much with what you say about the consistent energy and how well the melody and production work together that sets this apart from a lot of other girl crush songs. might i add, i think the girl’s vocal performance was so well tailored and intuitive for this style of song. this sounds exactly like the type of music i hoped kiss of life would release. i hope this group can stay consistent, both sonically and release timeline-wise.
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There’s definitely a fine line to walk when doing sing-talk and beat-focused production like this, and I think I agree that this manages to walk the walk on it.
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