Brown Eyed Girls return with ‘The Original’
Drop to your knees and start worshiping, because the Queens are back!
Amidst all the large-scale comeback in K-Pop this month, it was an unexpected (but very welcome) surprise when Brown Eyed Girls confirmed that they, too, would be returning with new music. Not exactly an official comeback, the group’s new 2-track digital single, The Original, is more of a promotional venture to lead-in to Ga-In‘s upcoming solo activities, and then BEG’s eventual new album.
And honestly, if any artist is going to obliterate every other major K-Pop comeback with nothing more than a digital single release, it’s going to be Brown Eyed Girls.
There’s so many things that make BEG the best girl group on the planet right now –the concepts, the genre-bending music, the sexiness– but before all else, it’s always about the vocals. Vocally, BEG is one of the best girl groups in the history of pop music — not solely for vocal power, but for the diversity of voices within the group. You’ve got Narsha with her angelic high notes; the vocally-versatile Ga-In who can twist her voice a number of different ways, but excels with her sexy low notes and huskiness; Jea, who is the powerhouse soul diva of the group; and to top it off there’s Miryo, who currently stands as one of the finest female rappers in the music industry today.
It’s safe to say that nobody is touching Brown Eyed Girls when it comes to the vocals.
With The Original not serving as a full-fledged comeback requiring BEG’s usual attention-grabbing concepts and addictive pop, the two songs on the digital single are predictably both ballads.
Track 1, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, is a stunning slice of sensual soul that serves as a throwback to BEG’s early days as R&B ballad singers. It’s real, classic R&B, littered with piano tinkles, jazzy percussion, and soulful spine-tingling harmonies. The way the vocals shift and change is truly breathtaking, opening with Narsha’s high notes, melting into Ga-In’s sultry huskiness, then smacking you with some girl group harmonizing before Narsha sweeps back in to take it to the top again.
You rarely hear singing like this anymore.
The second track, “Come With Me”, is a tad more on the typical ballad side than “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook it.
The build on “Come With Me” is beautifully epic, opening with Ga-In and Narsha singing the first verse and chorus over a gorgeous piano accompaniment, before a radio-friendly urban-pop beat kicks in on the second verse. The song continues to build, with the soulful Jea joining her bandmates before a string section is added to the production. Miryo sweeps in to drop a few bars, and then Jea and Narsha start belting over the top of some harmonizing in the background to finish the song off.
If this is just a digital single, I can’t wait to see what Brown Eyed Girls deliver when they make their next official comeback.
