#22: KARA - Lupin

In the past, aka last year, I constantly declared my dislike for KARA, and I really mean DISLIKE. They can't sing live, their songs sucked, I missed the old days, bla bla bla, but looking back, they actually had a pretty damn good year in terms of singles. Album tracks are another story, so let's just focus on the singles.

I know when a song has left a deep impression on me when I remember the first time I heard it - where I was, what I was doing, what time of the day I heard it, so on and so forth. I remember the first time I heard Lupin. It was a school day, so I put the EP on iPod and headed to school, from where I was supposed to go to this youth IT summit and bla bla bla. I even remember what brand soda I was drinking!

So anyway, my point is, from the very beginning Lupin has been one of the songs I've held in very high regard this year. I would've held it in higher regard had their vocals, both live and recorded, been near-decent. Oh well, you can't have everything in life. I think.

If my memory serves me right, Lupin was the song that started the whole "dark" trend among girl groups - caught on by SNSD and a host of others. But to be honest with you, the song isn't really that dark. It's actually pretty cheery, to be honest with you.

The arrangement is gorgeous, but there is a possibility that it sound very messy - there are a lot of different elements running around at the same time. However, I would like to congratulate the arranger(s) and producer(s) for keeping everything in check - everything flows very naturally and the production sounds very full. That and the song actually gets somewhere - dynamics are there, transitions are smooth, and everything just falls into place.

I. LOVE. THE. MELODY. It's gorgeous, it's got spunk, and so I love it. My only problem though, as many of you know, is that the vocals are crap. They are. Had someone with much better vocals released this, it would've been in the top 10 at least. But no. You have this fantastic arrangement with fantastic production and a gorgeous melody then you put crap vocals, both live and recorded, on top of it? I think not.