It’s been interesting to watch LE SSERAFIM’s trajectory shift over the years. They debuted with a sleek, stylish sound and a tight team of collaborators led by the once-great production duo Score and Megatone. But as time has gone on, the group’s music leaned further toward novelty, seemingly designed for memes and short-form content. This can be a fun approach if the songs themselves are as strong as their thirty-second highlight clips, but too often their recent output feels like a viral idea that just happens to have a threadbare song wrapped around it.
Such is the case with new single BOOMPALA, which samples and interpolates the iconic 90s dance hit Macarena. This is a sample I never needed in a K-pop track, even if I appreciate the song’s Latin house groove. But despite my aversion to the idea, I could see something like BOOMPALA being a hugely enjoyable summer hit in more creative hands. Unfortunately, the execution here is less than thrilling. The song’s best parts rely too heavily on the Macarena interpolation, which is surprising since the original is a deeply irritating track. Still, I love (re)hearing those synth stabs during the chorus as BOOMPALA‘s barely-there melody riffs successfully over the familiar chord progression.
However, this is faint praise. The song doesn’t do anything interesting with Macarena and slowly morphs into a straight-up cover as we reach the finale. They could have done SO much better with a “less is more” approach. BOOMPALA‘s one additional idea is its heavily-repeated titular hook (teased relentlessly prior to the song’s release). These monotone spoken-word segments inspire little excitement, simply killing time and keeping the groove going. Then we have equally inessential verses that employ the same repetitive sing-talk flow we’ve heard a million times over in derivative K-pop song after derivative K-pop song. In summary, BOOMPALA is essentially the Macarena with a ton of aimless talking and a Google sponsorship. Very little to see here. Move along. Or “boompala” along. Or whatever.
| Hooks | 6 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7 |
Grade: C-
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
this sounds like a bbno$ song
NOT A COMPLIMENT
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mind u bbno$ production is much better than this.
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Idk I like it😭
Im kinda sad to see them getting so much hate and no defenders😭💔
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anyway i’ve had enough, BAD MUSIC PARTY TIME!!!
let’s share all the music we would give a 5.75-, it doesn’t have to be kpop!
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let me join in as well lol
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might as well add memories by maroon 5 and best day of my life by american authors in here as well. These are two songs I genuinely cannot stand
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hey Nick, if possible, can you please delete this comment? I feel like this is not needed anymore and can clog up discussions. Thanks and have a good day!
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I still have terrible nightmares about that soundtrack:
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Their title tracks have sadly turned into meme music ever since Easy….. I said what I said. The only decent title post-Fearless-Antifragile-Unforgiven trilogy was Perfect Night and Hot. I can make an exception for Crazy because it at least had a specific vision and fit the house camp genre. I don’t like Macarena on a regular day unless it was for a fun dance party, so the heavy-handed usage of it here was… not good for me. I miss when samples were more subtle, like in After Like. Oh well.
When Celebration came out, I really hoped the album would be full of different house styles. Boompala is sorta there but also not. Anyway, the b-sides are actually WAY better, more interesting, and have more to say than the titles, which boggles my mind because I don’t think those two songs represent this album well at all.
Welp, MEOVV’s upcoming song samples Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, aka that “vampire” castle song lol. Let’s hope that sample is creatively used.
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Unforgiven was ahead of it’s time with the amount of absurd repetition of a single word, even more than Boompala probably lol, it was terrible.
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Lol true but the big saving grace of Unforgiven were the verses and energy of the song.
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hi nick! long time lurker of ur blog here finally deciding to make a dedicated account to comment on ur posts haha!! i had to comment on this song because i’ve been a big fan of this group since debut and this comeback really sets a precedent for their future title tracks that i’m really not sure i want them to pursue… Spaghetti was incredibly sticky but this is just really dissapointing. I think the bsides are really good on this album though, standouts to me would be creatures and saki!
hopefully, if this album is part of a series then we’ll get more back to back albums and therefore more (hopefully *better*) material. i was listening to slayyyter’s WGIA album before this and the whiplash honestly hit hard haha
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that has to be one of the saddest scratches ive ever heard in a recent kpop song
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this was irritatingly bad. I wasn’t fucking with the snippet in the first place and the whole song did nothing to change that. I hope people realize now how good CELEBRATION was.
the album is surprisingly good… except for this track. literally the only awful song.
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I do agree with usage of the hook it feels flat but the chorus is amazing, , with that in mind it’s kinda shocking the song is 3 minutes long.
Their title tracks have always been a miss because it has always been the follow up track the ones that delivers the good stuff, this one at least delivers the fun part.
Korea loved Spaghetti for much much less, this is targeted to those people with now something catchier and easier to dance even, it should do well there which this groups desperately needs.
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I really like the girls, and I know we aren’t in the best year, but a 7 is incredibly generous 😭
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The written review doesn’t even match the score.
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Sad to see Le Sserafim’s quality of music decline since Spaghetti.
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I am BEYOND shocked that you were generous enough to rate this song a 7. I like to check your reviews every once in a while out of curiosity because I genuinely respect your opinion but rating this song higher than, for example, Gold by Itzy, is egregious. Gold is not a show stopping comeback, but Boompala is, without a doubt, the worst song I have ever heard in my life. The video is so horrific too with its product placement and blatant AI usage to the point that it made me uncomfortable. I used to love Le Sserafim, but for most groups, this song would be career-ending. Spaghetti was a stretch, but this song is the nail in the coffin for me. The Hybe machine will keep them afloat but this comeback is shameful. 1/10 for me.
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The cynicism of the music industry knows no bound. It feels like they said “let’s feed people the biggest pile of crap and lets see if they will eat it up”. It’s so so bad. Surely some people will gobble this up and the industry will keep give us terrible music like this. The bar is getting lower and lower each time.
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The previous song Spaghetti literally talked about this “Eat it up, eat it up!” Truly cynical.
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Very, very disappointed to say the least. The Macarena sample adds literally nothing to the song, it only ruins it further. I already hate samples in Kpop, but if you’re gonna do it, then at least do it like Ive’s After Like, where they just take the basic melody. The song and sample don’t work together at all! The song in itself is also not that great. Honestly Celebrate should have been the title track. What were they thinking? Plus the whole album is severely underwhelming. This is my fave ult group, I waited over a year for this, this should have been like Christmas to me. But it’s just… meh
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My thing is, there are four major parts of music: rhythm, timbre, melody, and harmony. 80% of this song only utilizes the first two, and the other 20% does the bare minimum by interpolating the macarena of all things. Music is at it’s most beautiful when melody and harmony are being creatively utilized, or at LEAST utilized at all. There is just absolutely nothing appealing to me when the two (imo) most crucial parts of music are totally ignored in a song.
So idk. The dance is fun!
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Yes, YESSS agree. Also adding, music is about expressing human emotion. The original Macarena was a joyful frivolity. There was a reason everyone at every wedding reception did the Macarena. This copy here strips it of all that to a joyless monotone.
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the spoken word intro is musically more interesting than this. i was so hoping Spaghetti would dictate their music path… i guess in a way it did? but in all the wrong ways.
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Not exactly esserafim best title track material to date. The song had good intro and outro, but for the most part it relies heavily on the hook (boompala) and the chorus sampled from hit song Macarena. I am also not a fan of talk-chanting used during verse (Kpop really loved using it these days). They should use verse with more melody/harmony part to keep it interesting.
At least the album B-sides are quite good. I recommended Creature for pop rock fans or Sonder for ballad fans. Ironically, the best track in the album is Irony
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i really don’t wanna hear this song again, but ik for a fact im gonna hear it everywhere on tiktok so i have to prepare myself.
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I legitimately love Macarena lmao, but this is really
not it. I see glimpses of a good song in there, but none of the pieces connect to make it come to fruition imo.
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Oh and the lyrics though? If you didn’t know, Macarena is a girl’s name and the song is about a promiscuous girl who cheats on her boyfriend.
The Spanish lyrics are “Give a little loving to your body Macarena, because your body is made to give joy”
And then Sakura literally sings “I’m loving on myself, I’m coming”
Like WTF??
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A true anti-millenial song! Well, have fun with this one kids! Don’t do drugs!
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What old meme songs would actually be welcome to be interpolated/sampled now? Maybe ATEEZ could make “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” work? KickFlip and “99 Luftballons”?
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It would be quite something if a kpop group covered or sampled 99 Luftballons, if one understands the meaning and setting of the song.
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I came to this blog originally for the insightful musical reviews, and I still am here for that, but now I mostly appreciate when Nick is sassy in the reviews.
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for real, Nick can be really creative. like, look the universe app reviews
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And don’t forget his review of Ravi’s Still Nirvana where he straight-up crashed out! And there’s DTDTGNGM by Eternity/Iiterniti too :3
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… a 7 is very generous
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