I love Orange Caramel, but can't stand After School. Orange Caramel are quite funny and fun, whereas After School is too serious and wannabe sexy for me. I think that OC are knowingly cute and coy in a way that seems to subvert the usual kawaii kind of pandering. To me it seems like they're having a hell of a time playing with K-pop tropes and stereotypes and making kind of a joke of them; there's that trot influence and the campiness of "Bangkok City" and "Shanghai Romance" or the unabashed "asianness" of "A~ing" and "Magic Girl". It's something in K-pop that I feel like only T-ara before them have seemed to approximate in their music.
I think that's why the saxobeat/americano-styled beat on "Lipstick" works well with them. It's goofy, a little exotic, and corny. Whether that's just because the beat seems to recall those hits is perhaps a question worth raising, but regardless it's a totally slippery and wild arrangement that lets them cram in all their weird vocal ticks and hooks. Kind of feels like the aural equivalent of them making little heart symbols with their hands or winking in schoolgirl outfits and stuff.
It's too bad the whole album couldn't be like the singles (or have "My Sweet Devil" and "Funny Hunny" on it) because that's clearly the niche Orange Caramel works best in. The ballads and R&B love songs seem to be the total antithesis of their whole shtick, and I have no idea why K-pop labels always shoehorn that kind of stuff onto an album. Maybe that's what's popular in Korea and my view of Orange Caramel is skewed because I'm not a native, but I just think there's a dissonance between their ballads and singles that's more than just "dance song" and "love song".
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I think that's why the saxobeat/americano-styled beat on "Lipstick" works well with them. It's goofy, a little exotic, and corny. Whether that's just because the beat seems to recall those hits is perhaps a question worth raising, but regardless it's a totally slippery and wild arrangement that lets them cram in all their weird vocal ticks and hooks. Kind of feels like the aural equivalent of them making little heart symbols with their hands or winking in schoolgirl outfits and stuff.
It's too bad the whole album couldn't be like the singles (or have "My Sweet Devil" and "Funny Hunny" on it) because that's clearly the niche Orange Caramel works best in. The ballads and R&B love songs seem to be the total antithesis of their whole shtick, and I have no idea why K-pop labels always shoehorn that kind of stuff onto an album. Maybe that's what's popular in Korea and my view of Orange Caramel is skewed because I'm not a native, but I just think there's a dissonance between their ballads and singles that's more than just "dance song" and "love song".