As is often the case with Japanese tracks, izna’s Dumb Hot! was released a few weeks before its music video. Sometimes, that offers the chance for a song to ingratiate itself without visuals setting any concrete expectations, but there’s not enough song within Dumb Hot to succeed on its own.
To put it bluntly, there is no reason for Dumb Hot to exist. It’s the latest in an endless (endless!!) line of subdued girl group tracks borrowing heavily from UK garage. We are now on year four (!) of this musical trend and there is absolutely nothing left to wring from it. Add muted synths and a dumb sing-talk hook and you’ve got a track that might as well just be a conglomeration of a thousand other songs. I’m no proponent of AI in music, but a machine could probably write something more interesting than this.
At just over two minutes, Dumb Hot doesn’t take much of your time and doesn’t really ask anything of its listener. Put it on in the background if you must, but there are so many better ways to soundtrack your day than listening to an idol group rhyme “dumb hot” with “talk talk,” “one shot” and “shock shock” with no discernible passion or interest. File this under: “the song doesn’t care, so why should I?”
| Hooks | 6 |
| Production | 7 |
| Longevity | 6 |
| Bias | 6 |
| RATING | 6.25 |
Grade: D
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
all the budget went to metronome
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IZNA is a rare group where one of the rappers is Japanese. Where Korean rappers often default to simple, English-heavy raps on the Japanese tracks, IZNA could have used Koko’s fluency in the language to really go in. Alas, this is not that song.
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now, to be fair, can you think of a group with a Japanese rapper (which is more common than Japanese vocalists in Kpop groups!) in which their Japanese discography have actually utilized said rapper to really go in?
of course, ‘localized groups’ such as &TEAM, NCT Wish, NEXZ come to mind. idk NiziU’s rap game, and idt XG uses their native language in their discog (sans a few lines like ‘sayonara I’m gone’). so I wanna know if there’s a group out there doing such utilization, or perhaps this comment was a suggestion to let Koko stand out (in which I am here for, that girl is my bias)
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Calling someone Dumb Hot is not even shocking anymore, that is how over this trend is. aaaaaand I made it to 1:07 on the song. moving on
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WAKEONE groups have been (mostly) killing it this year on the Korean comebacks, I wonder if they have a different A&R for their Japanese stuff
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I think “headache” would make for better background music
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literally no uk garage song from this trend has touched the excellence that is daniel bedingfield’s gotta get thru this (tho jungkook’s seven comes close)
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Its already post-newjeans era already but it sems kpop has not moved on from their overhyped shadow nor given up trying to replicate their sound. Let the past remained in the past and just step on it please.
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I feel like this is less a trend NewJeans started and more that the fact that so many “subdued” hooks were going viral in the early 2020s (Doja’s Say So, 5050’s Cupid, etc) caused lots of artists’ teams (NewJeans themselves included) to hop onto genres that could easily conform to those trends. WHEN will it end…
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I’m not even a newjeans fan but I admit they created some sort of cultural reset in kpop with all of these types of tracks releasing even until now.
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