It’s a tough call. The tightrope tension of “Black Swan” makes for a fine single. And “나쁜 남자가 운다 ,” flush with plugin wooze, is like 2009 Noah “40” Shebib meets the Asian pop vacancy PC Music keep reinterpreting. Really, all of underrated septet Rainbow’s new mini-album Innocent — the tightest EP out of the Korean mainstream in a long while — merits mention.
But “Pierrot,” probably, is best. A dancehall vs. Europop rave-up, it’s an electric shock of kinetic genre shifts and studio spark, all surging toward pop hook absolution. Idol raps often fall far out of bounds, but when emcee Woori whirls up to the mic in (of course) the bridge, a well-measured bass line adds just the right backspin to turn a potential cringe into the song’s most gratifying moment. Observe, also, the way a single filtered bar after the chorus somehow reconciles two very unrelated segments of music as though it were the simplest arithmetic. This is why we like you, K-pop: an old master’s feel for pacing and detail, with all the irreverence of a playground.
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