The Future of Girls' Day

I've never been turned on by Suits so much in my life...

Remember how I did  a post like this for SNSD? Now I'm doing one for Girls' Day.


(WARNING: THIS IS A LONG ASS POST!!!)

Now of course if we're gonna do this type of article again, we need to look at their early days...

Et Voila!

Okay, why are there five girls here? And why can I only recognize two of them...

 People looking at this photo would probably be confused as to who the heck these people are (and what have I done with Girls' Day!) but relax, you'll see where I'm going with this in a moment.

If you look closely enough you can see that Minah and Sojin are in amongst these weird brightly coloured girls, but please don't ask me which one Sojin is... I can't tell the difference between her and Ji-in for the life of me. However Minah is in between Jisun and Ji-in/Sojin with the pigtails... Looking kyeopta as fuck and a bright expression on her face too.

This group is completely different to the Girls' Day we know and love today, the modern Girls' Day are way more focused on Sexy Concepts and smooth RnB tracks with alluring, sensual stares that can make a grown man cream himself (felt that first-hand... and second as well, because I like using both hands to fap).

Whereas this iteration of Girls' Day were more focused and cute, and sometimes extremely awkward, concepts similar to the modern iteration of SECRET.

Their debut title track was "Kyaawooddung" or "Tilt My Head" and it sounds a bit like this--

They were so nugu here! XD

The roles were different back then as well... Sojin was still the leader because she's the only unnie in the game repping Seoul and Mechanical Engineering at the same time.

But as you can see, Minah was more focused on being the Face of the group and the Cute, Aegyo-filled, Maknae as opposed to being the Main Vocalist.

Because back then Ji-in and Sojin were the vocal line, Jihae was the rapper, Jisun was the dancer and Minah was the one that did all the cringeworthy facial expressions.

To give credit where credit is due, this is quite a catchy song and it was a good concept but it wouldn't have taken them as far as their newer songs would've done especially considering what they followed up with...

How About Me was a very nice song, to put on as album filler, but it is very weak in terms of a title track... And honestly I didn't blame Jisun and Ji-in for wanting to leave because they had to deal with this as a title song and obviously it didn't do well... Dream Tea really didn't do their market research at that point in time and honestly the entire thing just screamed cringe.

Funnily enough now, both Ji-in and Jisun are "happier" with their new groups... In 2011 Jisun became JN and joined New F.O. Whereas Ji-in joined a pop-rock group known as Bebop this year and released a cool song called "I'm the Best", which is the only song with that title that I will ever listen to sober.

This is where Hyeri and Yura come in and a more modern lineup of Girls' Day takes place. Minah steps us a main vocalist, taking the burden away from Sojin and Hyeri takes over as the Maknae and as the dancer of the group... at this point in time Yura was considered to be the Face, but ended up being a Visual instead, due to Minah's building popularity.

Then they release this song!

This song is one of their best title tracks in their entire career, even better than Someday and I love the shit out of that song!

The whole Electro-Pop feel and the vocals were completely on point... It finally felt like Girls' Day found their niche, their style of music! It even charted well for them (#63 when everything else before didn't break the Top 70) and opened the doors for them to reach new heights!

But then another roadblock came in the form of old habits dying hard... I don't know why they returned to the cute concept after their breakthrough with "Nothing Lasts Forever" but I suppose it might've had something to do with their company hoping for it to peak higher.

This time however, they incorporated more of a goofy kind of cute as opposed to the cringiness found in "Tilt My Head" and thus gave birth to "Twinkle Twinkle".

Now despite the fact that I felt that this MV was WAY too Minah-centric, I realized that at the time it was needed... No-one knew who the other members were after all, and it only felt right to ensure that the Face of the group had her face shown, not only that but the iconic high note that Minah sings here still sends chills down my spine to this day.

Also the members all seemed to be on the same page here at the very least, and I feel that if this song was released during the start of their career, Girls' Day would've gotten big as a Girl Group centred around cute concepts just like A Pink.

Or better yet if this was their followup song to a debut song like "Nothing Lasts Forever" now that would be a debut that could rival the likes of miss A. Girls' Day would probably have ended up as big as SNSD or 2NE1 (okay maybe that's stretching it a bit, but you get what I mean...).

Alas, this song charted at #5 when it could've easily been a no.1 hit... This song was like "Bar Bar Bar" back then, seriously. Still #5 is amazing for a "rookie" group and they clawed and scratched their way to that position...

With that in mind, you'd think Girls' Day (and by extension Dream Tea) would've learned their lesson about lackluster followups right?

So I like Heat... Sue me.

Introducing Hug Me Once.

To save you the trouble, it is literally a lazy as fuck holiday MV with Twinkle Twinkle 2.0.

I just despise when companies do this, they take a song that their group gets popular off of and releases a followup that is practically a shitty remake of it.

When will they learn that it never actually works in a decently successful manner? If anything it works to discredit you... Why do you think Super Junior's discography (post-Sorry Sorry) has sucked so badly?

And the worst part is, any momentum they've built up with Twinkle Twinkle was critically injured here and completely died in the year to follow. It even lead to Jihae leaving the group... of course she cited "Studying" and personal reasons, but we know the truth.

2012 saw them release "Oh! My God" which is yet another cringe-worthy and annoyingly cute (as opposed to endearingly cute) title track that has some of the most obnoxious b-boying I have ever had the displeasure to see.

Then "Blue Rain 2012" which showcases their talent but is a remake of another groups song... Not a fan of those no matter how good they are.

Finally they ended the year with "Don't Forget Me", good song but it peaked at 14.

It seems like no matter what they did, they couldn't recreate the success of Twinkle Twinkle and that they were destined to fall back into the pits of despair and nugudom.

Then suddenly, Dream Tea did some scouting and saw that SISTAR and other groups were getting popular off of more risque and sexier concepts, and as soon as they found that out Sojin ran into the office and complained that the stylist accidentally dyed her hair red and now she looked like an iljin whore, how could she ever do a cute concept with her hair like this?

Dream Tea then checked through the Track Listing of the album and changed their title track from "White Day" (which was already filmed at this point) to this song--

It finally clicked, Girls' Day finally got the attention they yearned so badly for and all they needed to do was drop it low for horny teenage Korean fanboys and yours truly.

The song peaked at No. 9 but that was only due to the competition it was up against and the fact that Girls Day's popularity was completely stagnant and dying before they came back with this.

The impact the song AND the concept had still has it's mark today in 2014. These girls had struggled for four years (especially Sojin and Minah who were there from the beginning) to get to that point and this song opened the doors for their more permanent public recognition.

The song was catchy, the concept was brilliant and the girls looked sexy as fuck... I think Sojin had been thirsting for a concept like this for all four of those years, to be honest.

See what I mean?

But the big question is... Did the Girls' Day curse happen again? Did they put out another followup that killed their momentum?

No... It propelled them to new heights.

Female President (even though it sounds like a cover of "Wings" by Little Mix) was responsible for peaking their highest ever on Billboard (7th) as well as matching Twinkle Twinkle for their best rank in Korea at the time (5th).

But the biggest thing of all, was that it got them their first victory on a music show... Unfortunately it wasn't televised due to a tragedy happening at around the same time.

But the best thing of all was the gratuitous ass-shots in the MV.

Yura... Serial bias-list ruiner with an ass blessed by Valhalla.

Is this why they call her "Bang" Minah?

All in all, Female President was the best thing to happen to them and me.

And finally, truly embracing the sexy-aspect of their new signature concept, Girls' Day graced us with yet ANOTHER comeback earlier on this year (to which I've already complimented and reviewed).

TA-DAH!!!

Something was their most successful song yet with at least seven wins on Music Shows and peaking at No.2 on both Billboard and Hot 100 K-Pop.

The funniest thing about all of this is that this song was slated to be Minah's solo track, it still felt like it but the girls fit their roles (regardless of how small they were) properly.

Their maturity has shown in their later stuff, the vocals have improved and so has their portrayal of their concept. Of course this always happens after a group hits daebak, it wouldn't do well to remain stagnant and not improve or even show any signs of changing the style up a bit, right?

The most impressive thing about Girls' Day is their growth and their hard-working ethic and that is one of the things that I admire about them as a group. They try so desperately hard to reach somewhere and aren't content until they've reached that target, or if they've done so, they aren't content with staying there for long.

It shows in their variety appearances, their live performances, their interviews and their fan meets... But I can't help but feel that even though they have all the right tools and the right attitude to succeed, they are struggling because their try-hard attitude is too apparent to the point that it is almost off-putting.

Sojin made an appearance (along with the rest of Girls' Day) on Hello Counselor and when the MCs asked her to do a sexy expression, she jumped at the chance without hesitation and almost as instantly crumpled in humiliation, before giving deep apologetic bows to the members of the studio audience.

Scripted or not, that is cringeworthy levels of attention seeking, developing a variety persona is all well and good, but for goodness sake retain some dignity, she's an idol, not a puppet (even though both usually equate to the same thing).

Ironically enough, Sojin is the best behaved out of all of them in this regard... Yura is somewhat calm as well but tends to have the same problem  as Sojin, Hyeri is constantly laughing to the point where one wants to question the alcoholic content of her blood... And then there's Minah.

Every time she opens her mouth I just imagine nuclear warheads going off in a tidal wave of mindfuckery and facepalm-related concussions resulting in a monumentous explosion of "Did she just say that?" and "Why the fuck did she just do that?" from yours truly.

Barring Tony Ahn luring Hyeri into his Ahjussi Mousetrap with his Cheddar Smelling Penis (patented by Choiza) every Girls' Day related controversy to date has either had Minah directly involved or had something to do with Minah having an active part of the decision making.

It wouldn't be as much of an issue if she was a minor member of her group who didn't really have much of a role... Unfortunately not only is she the main vocalist (a role known for having some of the most eccentric or socially awkward idols) but she is also the face of the group... Fucking what?

Let me put it more simply... Imagine if Yoona and Taeyeon found some Potara earrings, fused into Taeyoona and was the main vocalist as well as the face of SNSD, but they had multiple controversies in which they said shit like "Because of an airplane crash, our 1st Music Show win wasn't officially recognized" or that she started annoying the fuck out of every variety show MC and Audience Member (read: Netizen) ever.

Despite the fact that you might be distracted by the mystical earrings on her earlobes, my point still stands... SNSD would be on the shit-list of every Netizen on Naver, Nate and Pann. Hence this is an issue with "10 out of 10 would" Bang Minah.

Now I'm not saying that this is the point where Dream Tea should jettison Minah from Girls Day at the speed of a speeding train, but rather encourage her to either speak less or to remind her of what is not annoying/controversial to say and encourage her to say those things more often.

Also the other members need to be a lot more natural in their appearances, stop trying to do too much lest they end up getting less appreciation for it and while I'm at it, make more songs like Something only with better line distribution... that song was amazing but the amount of Minah exposure in that video always bugged me, even if she is the main vocalist and face of the group.

What does this say about their future though?

Based on the success of Something and the fact that they've been on a continuous upward climb since Twinkle Twinkle ("Tilt My Head" and "Nothing Lasts Forever" are still pretty good for what they were though) their popularity is on par with groups like f(x), 4Minute and SISTAR and the wall between them and the likes of SNSD and 2NE1 is crumbling by the minute.

They've already had their fair share of member changes as well as controversies and their diligence and hard work have paid off in terms of popularity, maturity, growth and experience. The worst part is, I don't even think they've reached their peak yet.

I honestly believe they have one more song in them that could propel them to National Girl Group status in a similar fashion to the way that "Twinkle Twinkle" or "Expectation" would've done if they were more popular before releasing it.

If anything, I really need to draw more parallels to SNSD here.

Look at their biggest songs...

Gee = Twinkle Twinkle
Genie = Expectation

The similarity of the concept as well as the fact that both groups had their songs in this order is something I find really interesting, because everyone makes that parallel of A Pink to SNSD, but I honestly believe that Girls' Day is the most similar to SNSD out of the Girl Groups currently around, in terms of growth and what they had to go through.

All in all the future looks bright for Girls' Day if they can keep growing like this and if they can keep themselves on a leash (particularly Minah) when it comes to certain statements, otherwise they'll become another girl group that came close to getting that standard of fame.

Thank you for reading up 'til now if you stuck with me... Here's your reward!

I seriously love this picture.