Me again, here be rookies! SM Rookies. That I am surprisingly enthusiastic about.

This was really…odd. In a good way? Another Summer song as my own summer comes to a close. The song is fun and cheerful and the choreo is cute without being overbearing. The MV is so colourful and crazy and fun to watch though I hold some styling issues with this one. Be warned that this one is going to include a rant in the end.

Similar to my Back review I am going to attempt to summarize the video first. This will likely make little sense but it amused me. Feel free to skip ahead.

We begin with a parrot. An awfully cute one. He’s all fluffy. He flies away and is quickly followed by the world’s most terrifying floating perfume bottle. Not really sure what that has to do with anything but okay. Next we appear to go through a visual corridor depicting each member in different situations/locations. There are gummy bears involved. We’re then asked about our state of happiness.

Now, to tell you the truth even though I’ve looked it up six times I still can’t keep track of which one is which so from henceforth they will be known by their hair color.

Ms. yellow is standing in what appears to be a pink version of the Grand Canyon the sky made of cheetah spots some giraffe print (also pink) and rippling water. There are green apples, a unicorn, and a large white picture frame in the background and foreground. Now she’s standing in a computer-generated field of orange tulips with a pink orange, green buggy, and something I think might be a sideways flamingo. Ms. pink is standing in a whirlwind of hot pink lipstick tubes. Before transitioning onto a background of either bushes or broccoli, newspaper clippings (I will get to this in the rant section), a cat, and some random makeup and accessories.

Blue is in a strange rock clipart collage with a white stag and a couple of falling ice traffic cones. There are also some grapes. Green has an actual room. Go you, Green! She is followed into this room by a pink bouncing ball. Then Pink appears in a white picture frame. Followed by Blue dancing in. All four members are now present the blue furry room. The pink bouncing ball has now turned into a bear.

Next up we have a cleverly edited Ms. Yellow dancing followed by Pink in a lifeguard’s chair with a telescope (is that a telescope? Is there a different name for handheld ones?) Oh, wait. I was wrong, it’s a kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope with Green inside. Now there are mirrored Pinks in a kaleidoscope of leaves and pink oranges. Then actual oranges. And here comes a field of Green, more oranges of varying colors and half of a dragon fruit.

We zoom in to a jungle clearing in which our colorful members are dancing in old-school cheerleading uniforms of varying colors. Our little pink gummy bear pushes away a background and then Green rides by on a pink bike in front of the remaining members. They are now wearing a variety of sailor and schoolgirl type uniforms. There is more dancing and then cut to a mossy feel in which Yellow is lying down with flowers blooming around her. Back to the clearing and now matching seriously, old-school cheerleading uniforms. They appear to be cheering for the same team this time. Then we have Pink and Green sitting on a suspended bed in their fake looking jungle hideaway. There are now city collage backgrounds upon which the girls are playing with a variety of small toy vehicles and then we come to a room in which the girls are dancing behind picture frames with very different images of themselves inside the frames as compared to their bodies beneath.

Blue has a little solo in a brightly lit (almost too brightly) room before we return to more dancing in both the clearing and a new room. The video ends abruptly.

Recap over. Now that that is done. Can I just say that despite all of the strangeness I find watching this video extremely entertaining. Which is a good thing. Music videos should be entertaining. Particularly when they are for songs that are bright and bubbly. I actually really enjoyed the kaleidoscope effects, strange collages, random fruits, and oddly placed animals. It really did go well with the song. Obviously, there are some issues that have been brought to the table, ones that I can definitely understand, even though I did not personally notice them until I read articles outlining them. I will get to that later on.

Aside from these issues I think that the video itself went over very well for me. I’m sure many of you have very different opinions but for me I thought that it was fun, catchy, and unique. The song itself was playful and really showed off the members voices and talents. The fashion was cute and quirky and, while not to my taste, it fit the video and the song to a T. I’m honestly really looking forward to seeing more from them in a way that I can’t say I’ve ever felt from an SM group before. Normally it takes me quite a while to get in to their music. If I do it all. With Red Velvet I immediately liked the music and the concept.

All that being said, time for a rant. Multiple actually.

Rant:

Let me start with the aura of negativity surrounding this group’s debut.

Do I think it was a strong debut? Not really. But I’ll be honest I don’t expect strong debuts from most companies. Any company really. There are always exceptions to the rule but basically playing it safe, can be a smart way to go. Especially when you’re backed by such a large and well-known company as SM. The song and video in many ways felt more like a summertime come back then a rookie debut. The issue is that Red Velvet was more or less upon us without warning. And because of this, perhaps unrealistically, we were all expecting something more. Part of the problem is that SM followed up a debut with the hype of EXO with a sudden debut that was unexpected. I don’t claim to know their reasoning behind us or whether it was a conscious choice at all, given that it has been two years, but I do know that in many ways these girls got the short end of the stick.

Red Velvet is good. I see a lot of potential in them. The girls are pretty and good singers and good dancers and they have a strong company and Sunbaes backing them. I can see them doing well in the future. SM picked a lousy time to debut them. It doesn’t matter if it was planned months ago or weeks ago. For the girls sake SM should have waited. As much as I imagine it would to be that close to debut and then postponed they may have been better off. The amount of negativity I’ve seen toward this group is outrageous. When I first watched the video and looked at the comments I scrolled five minutes before coming across a single kind comment. There’s always hate on every video for every group but this was extreme. And there is no reason for it. This was before the comments about the newspaper clippings and the plane toy. They were all just comments bashing the group for existing.

This is one of those situations where it’s really hard to say what’s right or wrong. SM made some mistakes in the video that they have copped to and they are willing to fix those mistakes. But that is only going to help so much. Because really, a lot of it was that people were looking for a reason to tear down the group. Of course, all those people who comment bashing the group, comparing them to others, so on and so forth, they watched the video and they brought attention to the video. In less than 12 hours Happiness had over 1 million views. So in many ways that negativity is a blessing but at the same time it’s also something that’s going to follow them around. Maybe it’ll help them, maybe it will hurt them but either way it’s going to be there and the members of Red Velvet really don’t deserve that. They deserve a clean slate to start their careers and I feel bad that they won’t get it.

Here comes the other half.

SM made a couple of serious faux pas’s with this video. Unnecessary ones. Because I watched the video immediately when I saw it in my subscriptions on youtube I was not exposed to anyone’s reactions toward it before hand. I was not aware that there were any issues and therefore I did not see the issues until they were pointed out. That doesn’t mean that they’re not issues. I’m not a PC person. At all. And as much as I know this might offend some I have to say that in certain situations I would have new issues seeing the same types of images in a video. In this case, however, they hold no purpose. I’ve seen articles about this symbolism in that symbolism and how it’s all about being happy despite negativity and all that but there was no need to get so specific. This isn’t a song about war. This imagery in a song like say Badman by BAP, I could get behind that. What happened here was that they tried to take a song and give it deeper meaning than it should have had. Happiness is a bright playful song about overcoming the world’s negativity and being a positive person despite it. It’s a personal song. Not a change the world song, but a change yourself song. There’s nothing wrong with that and we need more songs like that. Songs that boost your self-esteem and give you a daily dose of optimism. There was no need to bring in that kind of imagery. This particularly stands with the news articles (I personally think that the plane may never have been an issue had the news clippings not existed. The clippings brought in connotations that made other more innocent imagery seem suddenly less so.) That imagery needs to be edited out. It adds nothing and only serves hurt both viewers and the group who now has such controversy attached to their name. They had enough issues to start this was not something that they needed.

What are your opinions on the subject? Did you like the video? Red Velvet? Yay or Nay?