Released: July 2011, South Korea
Rating: 3.70
I've been really quiet about 2NE1 this year, but in my defense I was so busy that I hardly paid attention to the acts I didn't genuinely like to start with. However, listening to the EP a month late, I found this gem.
The really cool, no actually, amazing thing about "Ugly" is that when you look at the individual elements, it sounds nothing like 2NE1. The heavy synths (although there are still synths) have been replaced by an electric guitar line, no studio-made loops, instead there are actual, real drums, and the vocals have no extremely obvious processing. AND CL IS SINGING. It's about the farthest you can go from the 2NE1 sound, just before heart-wrenching piano ballads, and yet when you stop thinking of all the nitty gritty, it actually *does* sound like a 2NE1 song.
I have several guesses as to why it still sounds like a 2NE1 song, but they're far too tentative so we'll skip them altogether. However, there are a few elements that 2NE1 couldn't do without on this song. Despite the differing lyrics, the chorus is actually repetitive, and so is the middle 8.
The selling point for me was the melody. It's gorgeous. Simple, repetitive at times, but gorgeous. And they're all singing! I move to get rid of Dara, because CL and Minzy should just take over, with Bom having the occasional singing part. That would be perfect, thank you.
I thought this song was HORRIBLE. It's so whiny - "I'm so ugly, nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I want to go eat worms!" There's no "I'm far more beautiful on the inside than you'll ever be," it's just self-pitying and pathetic. As someone who's been suicidal and suffered from depression, I think that if I'd heard this song at my worst, I would have tried to do something stupid (like make an attempt at harming myself).
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