Girls’ Generation’s weird new single “Flower Power”
The otherworldly sirens of Girls’ Generation are due to drop their second Japanese album, Girls’ Generation II ~Girls & Peace~, on November 28. It’s already yielded one chart-topping single in the double A-side hit “Oh!/All My Love Is For You”, so chances are that the album is going to sell about a gajillion copies upon its magnificent release later this month. I mean, how could it not when the Divine Nine are playing retro flight attendants on the official cover art? I’d happily use up all my frequent flyer points just to board the same aircraft as the most breathtaking beauties in all of Asia the universe.
Hyperbolic stanning aside, the girls have just unveiled the music video for their latest single “Flower Power”, which is definitely one of the more unconventional thing they’ve released to date. It’s disguised as your standard electropop song on the surface, but it’s packing a lot of the eccentricities of J-pop wrapped up in a slick package of K-pop. The dancey production isn’t out of the ordinary, but the girls’ vocal delivery changes constantly, starting as autotuned and emotionless robot singing, moving into verbal finger wagging, girly high-pitched talk-raps, sassy chant-singing, and weird harmonizing (“Flowwwweeerrrrr”). The official lyrics are much stranger (at least, in their translated form they are). I’m unable to decipher what “Flower Power” is actually supposed to be about, but it’s something to do with how people are spiders who pretend to be butterflies, dancing in the club, and suspicious flowers. Whatever the fuck it means, I love it.
Most of SNSD’s original Japanese singles –like “Mr. Taxi” and “Paparazzi”– take a few spins until they start slaying me, and “Flower Power” is no exception. It wasn’t doing much for me on first listen, but now I’m locked in an endless booty pop and singing about deceptive flora at the top of my lungs (that’s a lie: I’m actually listening to “The Great Escape” on repeat, but I do that everyday anyway).
The accompanying “Flower Power” music video is pretty cool, if only because the defining Sunny takes center stage and hogs the whole thing with her blonde Bieber bowl wig and infinite charm. The rest is just fashion and dancing, with the members all rocking three different outfits throughout the course of the clip: sexy leather catsuits for the choreography scenes; some weird futuristic stewardess ensembles that scream J-pop; and the normal kind of edgy and stylish street wear that’s come to define their image since The Boys era.
They’re all so sexy and classy that they make your faves look like messy K-mart divas by comparison. Sorry.
Now check out “Flower Power” below.
