Review

Song Review: LE SSERAFIM – BOOMPALA

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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-

83 thoughts on “Song Review: LE SSERAFIM – BOOMPALA”

  3. 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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  4. 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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  5. 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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  7. 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 don’t get the love for CELEBRATION. It felt like the same words repeated over and over with airhorns and stomps for 3 minutes. THIS is worse to you? LE SSERAFIM proves enjoyable art is truly in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

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      • yes, this song is very made-for-TikTok viralism which is my biggest gripe with most HYBE releases for the past few years. CELEBRATION at least had some drama. this song is just desperate for a hit, quirky for the sake of being quirky. the writing is so flat & the sample is irritating. don’t even get me started on a certain member’s voice completely ruining the listening experience.

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  8. 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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    • A 7 is just… a meh – the most generic things, the most unforgettable piece always fall around here. And tbh for me, the songs that fall below 6 hit a special spot for me, it’s like a guilty pleasure, because I know that the song sound so terrible, but some how I’ll take it.

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      • But this is, for me, not a meh, this is bad 🤣 the girls sell the hell out of it though, they do have that star quality!

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      • If the rating scale goes from 1 to 10, how is 7 – 2 points above the middle rank – a “meh” and not “good”? Whoever promises to end rank inflation has my vote in the 2028 election!

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        • tbh I can see it. In movies, I usually give a 7 to competently made movies I don’t have any specific issue with, but also nothing I particularly love. Well-made by people who are clearly competent in their trade, but nothing to write home about.

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  11. 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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  12. 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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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17. 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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  19. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  24. There was the Android promotion with Come Over and NewJeans music video using the iPhone, that’s corporate collaboration, I think this is the first time I can say a group is outright shilling for AI.

    HYBE. Maybe I do need to seriously boycotting every group under that company rather than listen out of curiosity.

    4.25 (4,6,6,1). You can read everything above this score to understand the 1 again.

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    • update: so i read the lyrics. now, i’ve always had a tinge of a bad feeling because just the visual aesthetics and choreography felt like appropriation, but then i’m reading the lyrics along with a playback and holy appropriation, batman.

      Riffing off Macarena, a Latin pop song by Spanish musicians, while pulling all sorts of references to Hinduism/Buddhism, some not entirely thought out (e.g. “celestial chakra”, which is not one of them), to hinduism/buddhism. at least it’s the first time it extends beyond Black appropriation.

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      • Thanks for pointing this out, I’m white af so my knowledge on Hindu/Buddhist references and its ethics are basic, but I remember hearing ‘celestial chakra’ and thinking ‘is that even a chakra? Wtf are they talking about?’

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  25. i could barely finish this. at all. i hate this so much. even more than katseye’s gnarly, pinky up, and internet girl. that’s how much i hate it. this makes celebration seem like a masterpiece. the worst part comes first; an irritating stupidly high-pitched melody of “macarena”, another extremely grating song. next, we get the same “talking over a beat”. it’s been so overused by now that i should get used to it at this point, right? well, they somehow make this sound even MORE irritating. something about those stupid high-pitched effects that accompany the dumb repeat of “boompala” is probably why. i hate that they interpolated macarena out of all things, like it sounds like a nursery rhyme, which is something you never want to hear. the verses feel so boring, too. it’s so monotonous, the vocal tones sound annoying and unpleasant to listen to. by the time i’ve heard the 30th fucking “boompala aye” i wanted to rip my fucking ears out and jump off a cliff. like, where’s the melody (and NOT the stupid macarena interpolation)? the beats? even worse, they decide to LOOP the fucking macarena melody with the grating high-pitched warped effect. like, okay, i’d rather get fucked by a 10 foot pole with blades on it than listen to this shit ever again! le sserafim, i don’t know what’s gotten into you, but where’s my antifragile or fearless? even spaghetti or crazy?

    i know i’m being overly dramatic, but i just feel so pissed rn so this is rlly ranty.

    1.5/10.

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    • why do I look like an old man using this blog 😢? I don’t know how to post a GIF via link here… ok, so I’ll put my 1st reaction to listening to this song as a video:

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  27. I am not going to rate this audio, I don’t consider it a song, include spaghetti and celebration.
    I don’t see any attitude they try to convey in their recent songs, only the anxiety of being left behind by the 4-5th gen ggs, so they even transform themselves into some kind of skit actors in music industry, just to tell people “we are not over party”. I don’t even think the whole hybe crew respect music, they just copy and paste songs are played for decades in their work and write some lame melodies to fill up the rest part, and produce many Frankensteins to corrupt the whole kpop environment. Hybe is the cancer of this industry, I don’t care if my words are too harsh or not, anyway English is not my first language.

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    • sigh….since when was this site being infested by those toxic fandom

      say what you want about the song its your taste, but bringing up the whole corporate/label issue into one song discussion topic is not cool. You sounds like one of those HYBE antis on twitter

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      • Toxic fandom❌ I didn’t comment what you wanted to see✅ pointing out the faults hybe has made in this industry has nothing to do with these girls.

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        • You say it has nothing to do with the girls, but you make fun of the girls attitude saying they had anxiety? and becoming skit actors.

          All I can see is targetted maliciousness.

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            • Girl, why are you mad that I called out a bad behaviour?

              All of us had different taste in music, so its okay to trash a song or calling it bad

              But attacking label and artists is just malicious

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              • Buddy saying criticizing a LABEL is malicious is crazy. Look it’s pretty obvious with a lot of HYBE groups nowadays that they’re purposely making TikTok audios or making repetitive choruses to get people hooked despite the lack of production quality. That’s how they got me with Redred. There’s nothing original in that company and they’re currently suffering from creative bankruptcy. Look at other labels releases. Some might be mediocre or some might be good but at least most of them don’t sound like they ao generated a beat and some lyrics and call it a day

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  29. The song is just cuntslop; I think it’s an interesting example though because it’s trying so hard to use spiritualism in a ‘divine feminine’ way. It’s like Mood Ring by Lorde without the commentary. That said I think the song is too stupid to be trying to do something unique or special so…

    Rating it a 6, the hook’s fine, that macarena sample isn’t.

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  30. This is the worst song / thing I heard so far in 2026, straight to an F for me

    Sounds like something I’d hear on an advert close to world cup lol. Can’t believe this gets a C- and somehow Heavy Serenade is only a C+

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  31. Sometimes I try to imagine what kpop company executive meetings look like because the mental image of a bunch of very serious people in expensive suits deciding that -this- is what’s going to make their next few millions is the sort of thing that keeps one going through the absurdity of it all

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  32. sigh….since when was this site being infested by those toxic fandom

    say what you want about the song its your taste, but bringing up the whole corporate/label issue into one song discussion topic is not cool. You sounds like one of those HYBE antis on twitter

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        • I can understand the frustration for when discussions on here go past the music, but music isn’t made in a vacuum so it’s gonna happen sometimes. It would be weird if it always focused just on the music. even nick brings up things related to the song from time to time and he’s made it clear he likes to focus on the music

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  33. lsfm are one of my ults and my fav gg but this does NOT deserve a 7😭😭 it’s probably a 5 at MOST for me. one of the worst titles ive heard since the beginning of the year and definitely their worst one as well. coming from someone who loves spaghetti btw but this is just not it😭

    it makes me so mad actually bc i don’t fw neither boompala nor celebration but the rest of the album is a no skip, i loveveveve all bsides. why does they have to give them this kind of titles??😭 why couldn’t we have something like irony instead

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  35. I was intrigued by the comments to listen to the song. The beat was actually pretty nice, like a sequel to Spaghetti, and the BOOMPALA chorus I can get behind, but the rest of the song just didn’t hit for me. The tone of the spoken word verses was not as pleasant as most of their previous songs, but the Macarena sample instantly makes it a non-starter. I think Macarena is fun but the sample was used very poorly, too high-pitched verging on chipmunk territory, and and unlike some other K-pop songs that sampled or interpolated timeless songs like I Will Survive (After Like), Macarena itself was already a novelty hit, and since the Macarena sample is used prominently throughout LSFM’s song, why try to make a novelty out of it again? It doesn’t mesh well with the beat, hurting the track rather than being a benefit.

    This whole comeback was so messy from the song to the MV using and promoting AI, like others I am surprised the rating is that high! I don’t comment too often, much less to be critical, but this provoked some emotions and thoughts from me lol

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    • To add on the sampling part: the reason why songs like After Like and In Bloom used their sampling/interpolations successfully is because of the energy of those songs and how they built to the sampled parts. The energy of BOOMPALA, though the beat is good it sort of flatlines in the middle which makes the Macarena sample feeling more like a “huh?” than a “wow!” moment

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      • and they didn’t twist it in new directions either, even straight up doing the Macarena in the video.

        (sorry for the multiple comments, again lots of thoughts coming from this lol)

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