Greatest Hits:: Brown Eyed Girls: Abracadabra

 I decided to do a roulette wheel so I can let the submissions fill up a little bit more again. Thank you to everyone who has submitted! I will get to them, I promise. In the meantime, I wanted something random, and so I present to you a song that I've heard of, but haven't listened to, though I have heard a couple of songs by the group before.  

Brown Eyed Girls debuted in 2006, under Nega Network, firmly marking them as an early second generation group. Sound-G was their third studio album, released mid-2009. It won a Bonsang for Cyworld Digital Music Awards in 2010, another Bonsang went to the group at the Seoul Music Awards in 2009, and several other end-of-year awards for Abracadabra itself. That's impressive. I'm also deeply entertained that as I was looking through the list of songs the lyricists had written thinking to myself, "Why are these songs so familiar?", I found another song I've written a GH post for, so that's exciting (VOODOO DOLL). One of the composers (Lee Minsoo) has worked on a lot of Brown Eyed Girls, Gain, and IU songs. The other (Hitchhiker) has most recently been attached to a lot of SME group songs including various NCT subunits, f(x), and SHINee, but also some non-SME groups as well.

• Group: Brown Eyed Girls
• Debut Date: 2006 March 02
• Company: Nega Network
• Status: Hiatus
• Album: Sound-G
• Song: Abracadabra
• Release Date: 2009 July 21

It's been a hot minute since I've gotten my hands on such a science fiction sounding song, and it's so well suited for the throbbing club scene in an action movie where the two sides are hunting each other and having to dodge in and out of the partiers. But it does need to be a cyberpunk-flavored club with chrome and neon all blinged out and all over the place. But given the storyline of the music video, I will also take a black widow-esque girlboss and also possibly her minions. I'm not sure if that was a recruitment or not that took place at the end there, but yowza.

I'm a little entertained by the fact that my last two GH posts are about female sexual power. I swear I didn't plan for this to happen. It just worked out that way, and I didn't pick this one on purpose to match it.

However, and this requires a reference back to the lyricist, this is absolutely a cousin song to VOODOO DOLL by VIXX, released four years later by a boy group six years younger. The hair is similar. The eye makeup is similar. The concept of the two songs are in roughly the same vicinity. The girl from VOODOO DOLL absolutely could have been part of this little group they've got on here, and this could be a song from her perspective. It's so toxic, but it's so catchy all the same. Alternatively, speaking of dolls, they kind of feel a little bit like the dolls from Cyberpunk 2077, dolls that have decided to turn on whoever held their leashes.

I actually really appreciate the location difference between the narrative and the choreography, and it's not just the location that's different, but also the visual difference. The choreography and performance gets a desaturated, liminal space with a white background, and the narrative meat of the storyline gets actual sets with clear colors. The costuming is also different between the two, which is another helpful shortcut to understanding that the two parts are in fact two parts and happening separately.

And oh, my giddy aunt. The eye makeup. I was so instantly catapulted back to 2009 that I forgot how old I was for a second there. Those are truly smoky eyes, the kind that certain demographics of teens would put on in the morning before school and then by the end of the day would be in full racoon look-alike contests. I say that with fondness. I always thought it made their eyes stand out well. And their hair is so cool too. I can practically smell the hairspray. I'm aware that those aren't timeless looks, but it's very classic in the way that 80s hairbands are classic, or greasers are classic.

Also, as much as we could blame Jay Park for introducing the idea of challenges to K-Pop, one could also say that this song was part of the early wave of that movement, much like Psycho is considered a slasher flick despite being released before the genre was properly codified and also simultaneously breaking many of the conventions of the genre.

Choreography! The arrogant dance is absolutely iconic. I mean, look at that. The entire thing is incredible.

And just so everyone is clear, this next performance was five years later, and not only do they still have it, but arguably they never lost it. Their expressions have the ability to make one swallow their tongue. Four women in their almost all in their thirties, over ten years after they debuted, and the way they own this stage is nothing short of incredible.

You see what I mean? Oh, they're gorgeous. They are strutting like no one has ever owned that stage like them before, and no one ever will match it, and oh, how they've earned that. Also, it's deeply entertaining that one of them (Gain apparently) didn't read the group chat about wearing all black. And shout out to Ladies' Code for being in the background!

Have some comeback stages! I really have no defense of these outfits. I really don't. But the members are also so incredible that you kind of forget what you're looking at, which is definitely the point..

And here about to be seen is the futuristic vibe I was waiting for. I knew it was going to happen. The song is too perfect not to be used that way. I have no idea when this was, but I'd guess it's closer to the release than the MCountdown Tenth Anniversary performance.

So, overall, simply amazing song! The choreography is just so iconic, and the song itself is hypnotic. Incredible. Lovely. Amazing.