Greatest Hits:: GFRIEND: Rough

 Well, well, well, everyone! It looks like we're here for another rousing installment of "Guess the May Theme!" I'm the host, your Friendly Neighborhood Fangirl, coming to you with one of the most iconic third gen girl group songs we can look at. And there have been a lot of iconic third gen girl group songs, let me tell you. Actually, there are a lot of people who both lived through when third gen was new and also people who follow the girl groups a lot more closely, so you'd probably get more information from one of them. I can simply do my best by doing digging on the internet, much like I do with history when I go down rabbit holes and learn about moonshine brewing during the Prohibition when my question was about the alcohol content of whiskey and if you could use it to disinfect wounds. I was writing a Fallout fanfic.

GFRIEND debuted with six members in 2015 under Source Music, though they're not Source's first girl group, technically. Source and BigHit co-managed a girl group called GLAM that disbanded in three years, the same year actually that GFRIEND debuted. Normally, I'd be suspicious of that, especially with what happened to GFRIEND and their younger sister group, but this is the rare instance where I'm not going to attribute the event to a pattern because of what was going on with GLAM. You should look them up. GLAM was an interesting group, and I'm glad that GFRIEND was the way it was to break Source's potential pattern before it could begin. 

Rough is the title track from GFRIEND's third mini album, SNOWFLAKE, released in 2016. We have two songwriters and they have the same name, which is interesting. We have Iggy (real name Leem Su Ho) (TWICE, ASTRO, Stray Kids, Red Velvet, IZ*ONE, Rocket Punch, MAMAMOO, fromis_9, Park Jihoon, Block B, WJSN, Pristin, NU'EST, UP10TION, Orange Caramel, DIA, Baek A Yeon, B1A4, P.O.P, 1THE9, and GB9) and imsuho (ZEROBASEONE, IU, Chung Ha, Orange Caramel, LOONA, Ailee, ASTRO, HELLOVENUS, Kep1er, Ghost9, Golden Child, TOZ, ifeye, Park Jihoon, Pristin, NU'EST, EPEX, CLC, 2AM, MBLAQ, VIVIZ, MIRAE, Drippin, BVNDIT, MYTEEN, DIA, 15&, P.O.P, INFINITE, Bestie, KARA, FIESTAR, and After School). Obviously, they're not the same person, though they've worked together quite a bit. But Rough had a pretty big impact in 2016. On the end-of-year Gaon chart, it was ranked third and was the best selling song in South Korea for 2016. It earned four Triple Crowns and fifteen total wins on the music shows. Billboard even got on board with it, putting it at number thirteen on their list of top twenty K-Pop songs for 2016. It won best female dance performance at the 2016 MAMAs and the MMAs, song of the year for January at the 2017 Gaon Chart Music Awards, a Digital Bonsaeng at the 2017 Golden Disc Awards, Best of Best View for the 2017 SBS MTV Best of the Best, and Most Loved Songs at the 2020 Bugs Music Awards. So that makes it twenty-one specific awards that this song has won just from that list. Not bad for a small company's first K-Pop group (y'all, I also learned that Eden (as in, Eden Producer of ATEEZ and xikers) was part of a male duo under Source before Eden went to Cube). 

• Group: GFRIEND
• Debut Date: 2015 January 15
• Company: Source Music
• Status: Inactive
• Album: SNOWFLAKE
• Song: Rough
• Release Date: 2016 January 25

You know, every time I watch older music videos, specifically ones from around debut era, for groups that didn't vanish, I think about how surreal it is for the fans who have been there since the beginning, literally watching those members grow up, and are still there now. New fans are vital and so important, but there's a bittersweetness to the older fans who stayed with them. 

The reason why I'm thinking about that is, well, one of the songs coming up in May, but also the fact that I recognize only SinB from ten years ago consistently. I did finally recognize Umji, but that was only at the end when she was running. It's a bit like looking for familiar features in an unfamiliar face, where you've been away from your friend long enough that you have to relearn what they look like while they're in front of you rather than the version that exists in your head, frozen in time and unchanging, though perhaps fading. 

Ah, don't mind me. I'm feeling a bit sentimental, is all. Which I find I do frequently when it comes to this group.

But in my defense, the whole point of the song is that time keeps going. 

The choreography for this song is completely elegant. We will be talking about this later.

I know I try not to treat these posts like my regular reviews, but I'm about to say something that y'all are going to recognize from my regular reviews: violin! Listen to that violin! And the fact that it's openly used for the mini dance break between chorus and verse rather than just as part of the sonic landscape for the chorus? Love that. I love violins, especially when they're used in a high energy dance fashion, because that reminds me of how violins are used in Celtic folk music, where we have the dancing violinists (I love you, Máiréad Nesbitt). 

I love how the synthesizer is used in this song though to give it a little bit of a mermaid-like, underwater echo, helped by the actual water drops in the instrumental. They also have a song called Mermaid, which is one of my favorites by them, so that makes that haunting little whistle appropriate for the group in general.

There's a reason why this was another one of the first girl groups I picked up. Funny story, I decided to listen to them on a whim fall of 2023, shortly after I started listening to K-Pop, and went "Of course I like them. They're disbanded." 

Vocally we've got a lot of power here, even at a year after debut. There's a specific part of the chorus at the end where the vocals are layered and lingering, which increases the flow and movement of the song, like streams building into each other rather than rivulets moving along roughly parallel to each other, which actually is really similar to what we get from the music video where they're largely separated, but then come together at the end and makes the chorus a surprisingly good source of foreshadowing for the music video.

And the music video is so soft. My brain keeps reading the falling white floofs as snow, when it's just as likely to be flower petals (actually probably a little bit moreso considering the school location and the lyrics, because both things circle around beginnings and youth, which is a lot more spring coded than it is winter coded), but it gives the song an additional layer of elegance. And that's not even going into the soft lighting.

I'd also like to point out that for most of the song, unless we're getting the full group choreography in the courtyard or the practice room, the members are by themselves. In classrooms and on buses, by rivers and at bus stops. All of those places typically have a lot of people, but at this moment, they don't. In fact, when we see the vehicles, they're all moving away from the members, which makes the entire thing feel incredibly lonely. 

Normally, I start with Music Bank because that's where we get the members attached to their parts of the lyrics. And yet, neither Music Bank nor MCountdown decided to do that for this song. I'm not mad, just disappointed.

But this was the last of the four wins they got on Music Bank for this song. You may notice that I said the word "four". Things have changed a bit since 2016.

At 1:15, it sounds like Sowoon sounds like she might be a tiny bit off pitch right at the start of her part for the second verse, and Umji, following right behind her, also sounds like she may be a little off. I'm willing to chalk that up to in-ear issues, or just the result of actual live singing, because later, both of them sound completely fine. Either way, even though there are only two members with mics, the fact that you can hear conflict between their voices and the backtrack leads me to believe that this may have been live.

And I have to give a shout-out to Yuju's vibrato at :36. That's gorgeous. Her ad-libs during the break and the final chorus as well are just beautiful.

And I have to say I love that they're wearing skorts. The plaid pattern of the skirts is continued on the safety shorts, which is why I say that. Considering the spinning moves that they do, it's really cool to see that their costumes kind of acknowledge that and account for it. The camera angle is a little low during the dance break following the bridge (and one of the comments also called it out, so I'm glad it's not just me) as well as several other parts of the performance, and considering the maknae was only seventeen at the time, that makes it even worse. But the end of the bridge and the ensuing dance break are the most watched part of this video, which realistically is as it should be because look at how gorgeous it is.

Something about the sleeves of shirts like this remind me of being six. I hated them because of the texture. I may still hate them, but I refuse to wear shirts like that anymore.

I really love that they were on Simply K-Pop. It's the perfect place for them, really because as small of a group and company as they technically still were, though this song was the final nail in their nugudom coffin. 

And this was right in the middle of their domination streak for wins. 

But I really like the camerawork for this performance. It's a great blend of the close-ups and the group wide shots. I can also see why the :54 is so well watched. It's actually kind of sparkly and Yuju and Eunha, as always, sound stunning during the chorus. And even though there are some low angles in the camerawork, it's not in a section where they're spinning with their skirts flipping up. 

Speaking of the skirts, I really like that they're all perfectly matching in costume. I think it's a bit of a lost moodboard, if you want to look at it that way, to have all of the members not just matching in vibe, but actually matching completely. Given the synchronization of the choreography, having them match like this strengthens the performance.

And Umji is adorable and precious and looks so pretty with her bangs. 

Before we actually get to some of the big performances, let's enjoy the fun and chaos of GFRIEND having to do this choreography at 2x speed. This was the Lunar New Year special, with a special MC of Jung Yonghwa from CNBLUE (one of the biggest still active second gen bands). Yonghwa was shooketh. As he should be. That mouth was open the entire time.

The squeals, the giggling, the balance loss, but the committed synchronization! Also, this was apparently the start of the 2x speed segment on Weekly Idol, which is how we ended up with the still iconic BTOB Wow at 2x speed (we'll definitely be sharing that one if I ever do Wow for one of these). So I had to share this. I am legally required to do so considering how much I generally love that segment across the board.

Considering that this was not yet standard practice (and I know that some of the younger groups now actively practice at 2x speed to help build their stamina and to check for synchronization because it's a lot more noticeable when it's that fast), this is incredibly impressive. 

But I just want to point out how much SinB almost looks relaxed while they're dancing. It's really noticeable because she spends so much time in the front. She's in the black pants and the blue shirt and she literally grins her way through this entire thing. 

And then the Star Wars theme played at the end with their successful completion of trailblazing a new segment. As it should.

I'm glad that I caught this and snipped it for y'all because look at that. That's at 2:38. And can we appreciate that they did all of that and then still managed to be that synched up?

Anyway, back to the actual performances. The fan chant is so loud here. 

This is from the 2016 Korea PD Awards, which apparently has, as an event, gone back to at least 1989. So this is old and prestigious. And GFRIEND got an award that could have been their first daesang for the singer performer award, which is incredible. I imagine there weren't many performances for this considering there was only GFRIEND that won a music performer award, so there was a lot hanging on theirs.

Everyone has mics this time, which makes me happy, but I like it when the camera pulls back to show the prestigious people down at the tables. Like, for instance, at 3:19, when we've got someone right up front clapping to the beat of the song. And there's someone at 3:35 who turns around to look at the loudly cheering fans while she smiles. 

We're familiar with their Killing Voice because it featured in my post on Rainbow, but now we get to hear it for Rough!

And apparently this gave them their first win, too! I love that!

The vibrato on these women. I'm in love. Ugh. It's not fair. Whatever. I'm just happy that they managed to come back for this. And the difference in their vocal maturity levels when we're listening to this compared to some of the earlier performances. Everyone has grown so much in the almost ten years between when Rough came out and when they got to do Killing Voice.

And then there's SinB doing the choreography in tiny. Bless.

And speaking of vocal only performances, we're going to bounce back to 2016. GFRIEND's strength, more even than their dancing, is the strength of their vocals. 

And there's a precious moment with the leader. At 1:12, Eunha turns to Sowon and clearly says, "My mic isn't working." In Korean, of course, but even if you can't hear it and don't understand Korean, you understand that exchange because then we have Sowon letting Eunha use her mic when it's time for Eunha to sing. That's precious. And then the cutest exchange at 1:50 where we get some dimple action from Eunha.

It also looks like they used their actual school uniforms for this judging by the amount of SOPA yellow we're looking at because apparently they came to this radio program directly from school. It occurs to me that I may not have been able to listen to them at debut. Oh, well. It's not a problem now because they're all obviously grown adults and have been for years.

And Yuju doing the choreography at :12. It looks a little silly when she's doing it on her own, but it's cute because she's smiling while she does the sliding.

One of the things I remember most strongly from Queendom 2 is the look on SinB's face when she sets her jaw and says (paraphrased) "You know what? We're still GFRIEND. We can do those songs too." My response was "Yes, queen!" Of course that's going to be my response. Remember who my first and ult group is. 

That should dump you out to when they did Rough on Queendom 2 as VIVIZ, but if it doesn't, I'm starting you at 2:37.

By the way, the words behind Umji say "We will meet in the end. Even though we trapped in the time and lost in the way."

The full orchestra makes Rough even more magical and soft and I am so here for this. This is a reclamation and a declaration as much as it is a performance. And then the numbers behind them at the very end, when almost all of the dancers drop to their knees and the VIVIZ members unfold with the choreography at the end, with dancers in black to represent their missing members.

This performance, by the way, is the reason why intellectually I know that VIVIZ is its own group. I know this. Their achievements and musicality are separate. But in my heart, they're a subunit of GFRIEND just like BSS is a subunit of Seventeen and NU'EST W is a subunit of NU'EST. There's no difference. Because they have their debut date as GFRIEND followed by their debut date at VIVIZ behind them as they finish. They are both.

And you can see Eunha struggling to hold back her tears there.

In case anyone cares, here's the performance with the reactions by the audience members and the other groups. The visible support from everyone there and the emotions makes me cry every time I watch this. 

Here is the response when they came off stage. Eunha said something like "I could see the audience crying at the end, and it made me struggle not to cry until I was off stage."

Okay! Enough with the emotions! We're going to go back to TWS, to get a bit of a reset, because they've been doing a phenomenal job of covering their seniors' songs during their fanmeetings so far (especially the girl groups'). This is the rehearsal stage cam. If this doesn't spit you out to where Growl ends and Rough begins, you're looking for 2:53. Fascinating combination of songs there, as a side note. But Rough has, by far, the higher percentage of the replays.

As a side note, I love it when Shinyu has to sing (particularly at 4:35). It always pleases me because I know that Pledis makes sure that their rappers are also vocalists. No room for staying in one lane there.

It's a testament to the original choreography that it wasn't changed too much for the boy group to perform it, which we're going to get to in a moment. But TWS definitely has absorbed this choreography well.

Ugh, they're so cute.

Okay, dance practice time. It is time. It is time to run through time.

I love how much synchronized dancing there is here in this song, especially with how delicately they all move. 

:52 is the most replayed part of the video, and it's the part that every single stage, I've thought looked like something out of ballet rather than K-Pop. The elegance in their lines and the lightness of their steps is truly remarkable in that way that doesn't require fierce foot stomping to be utterly mesmerizing. I love it when they're doing their spins and dramatic flares with their legs.

And while the bridge is aurally distinct, because it's obvious when we get to it, the choreography there is just amazing. 2:17. They fold back up into a line where SinB steps out and is the only one moving, so you have a visual marker that something has changed. It also gives the members a moment to breathe and ready for the dance break that is coming. The moment at the end of the bridge as they lower their arms (and it looks like everyone has the same angles at 2:31, which is a bonus to their synchronicity) and then the energy immediately kicks up into a dance break where they're spinning and dropping and immediately popping back up. It's a whirlwind of movement that's just incredible to look at and ties off the bridge neatly as Yuju starts in on the ad-libs before the final chorus, and the fact that they're doing all of that and she doesn't get a chance to catch her breath before she does her ad-libs where it sounds like every performance she's been singing that live is so respectable. It's just impressive. 

And then SinB's clock at the end is just iconic. Gorgeous. Amazing. The entire thing is just an intense dedication to craft and energy and elegant power.

Thanks for your patience everyone, and thanks for reading this! If you haven't heard the song before, I hope you enjoy it now, and if you're an old hat with this song, then I hope that you enjoy it still. It's a beautiful song. Top tier vocals. Top tier dancing. 5 star Michelin (I have no plans to do that song yet, but if someone wanted to suggest it or any other song, you can always leave a comment or you can fill out The Form for me.)

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