Big Bang, “Blue”. Big Bang started as a hip-hop/R&B group and then turned into a J-pop group, but soft rock/pop is a more natural direction for them than it would seem: the seeds of “Blue” were arguably planted as far back as “Haru Haru”, through to Japanese single “声をきかせて” (Let Me Hear Your Voice) and last year’s U2-aping “Love Song”, each with less and less prominence given to a dance beat. “Blue”’s innovation is to take out Big Bang’s usual shouting-from-a-mountaintop bombast; the choruses are practically murmurs. As a consequence, it doesn’t really build to anything - the bridge-beat drop-final chorus ending is more for organization’s sake than composition’s - but it’s just so pretty that I’m with it the whole time. And I would listen to Daesung sing a textbook on industrial relations.
(See here re: the use of a white model in the video, and possibly also re: why they shot this in New York.) (But I do quite like the editing that, to paraphrase someone on ilX because my computer will die if I go to check the exact quote right now, makes it look like they both are chasing her and are her.)
