Song Review:: Kep1er: BUBBLE GUM- BUBBLE GUM

• Release date: 2025 August 19

• Album tracklist: Taste Better, BUBBLE GUM, Don't Be Dumb, Ice Tea, Yum (KOR ver.)

• Album runtime: 3 minutes

 I am glad to see them continuing to make music as a group. Would I have liked to have all of them renew? Yes. But it's fine that that didn't happen because Kep1er did something I don't think any other project group has done. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're the first group formed solely from a survival group with the temporary contract to sign a new, longer one to make them a permanent group, right? That's pretty cool. I'm however appalled at the album runtime. Even removing the first song, which is barely a minute long, the average still doesn't make it to three minutes. I'm so annoyed that this isn't the exception anymore. And here's where normally, I'd be like "It's fine" but you know what? No. It's not. Why do kpop companies give them diet songs? It's bad enough that so many of them keep them on unhealthy diets but to do it to the music as well? Sigh. It's a frustration.

For what the song is, this has a good beat that would probably make it a decent work out song. There are softer slowdown sections, but it doesn't affect the energy levels of the song too much because we only get probably three or four bars at most until we get the drums and the synth back in. I also would have expected a song called "Bubble Gum" to be a little bit more bubblegum pop, but I like this a little bit better than that. We also almost have a dance break, so that's exciting. But we could have gotten a lot more with a longer song. Even fifteen more seconds would have given so much space to fit interesting things into the song.

You know what's funny? Vocally, this song reminds me a lot of Wife by i-dle, formerly (G)I-dle, if you missed that. It's got similar levels of sass and hair flipping and strutting. It's not nearly as weird, but at the same time, I'm reminded a lot of some Girls' Generation songs. It's a good combination to be fit the song into because it shows off a pretty wide range of styles and textures in the same song without any of them being too dominant. If there's a part that I like less, well, I know it won't last forever and we'll get to something I like better. But I've had this on repeat for the last...hour or so, and I'm still enjoying it. So that's actually a pretty good recommendation.

I am so much about this music video, it's not even funny. We've got some choreography, mostly during the chorus which is likely where the dance challenge is going to come from, so that makes sense, but we've also got so much storyline that I was delighted. I mean, first of all, it feels a little bit like a clap-back against sasaengs, so I'm loving that. Second of all, there's like a dark superhero, celebrity spy thing going on, and I'm kind of all about either option. And then at the very end we get tastes of apocalyptic chaos caused by massive amounts of chewing gum? Do they have bubble gum flavored (pun...a little bit intended) powers? Because if so, that's pretty cool.