Nineteen months. It has been nineteen months since Rainbow released "Rainbow Syndrome Part 2" and since then all we've had was the debut of sub-unit Rainbow Blaxx, who despite a solid mini album failed to compete with Girl's Day, AOA, or even Dal Shabet. After being overtaken even by rookie groups such as Red Velvet and MAMAMOO, it seemed all hope for Rainbow was long gone, and they'd be left to hang around the "borderline" tier forever. After a painfully long wait they've finally returned, but a lot of people have been sorely disappointed, and I'm not surprised, because "Black Swan" truly is a peculiar song, and I've had to rewrite this review twice because of it.
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| "W-what do you mean, "We're on the same level as Hello Venus"?" |
Let's face it, Rainbow aren't exactly known for having the most unique and ambitious songs: "A" was brilliant but pretty mindless, "Tell Me Tell Me" was pleasant but incredibly vanilla and "Sunshine" took the formula of the former song and somehow made it worse in every way. "Black Swan" is completely different to anything the group has done before, and in fact it's very different to most K-pop songs in general due to its unorthodox sense of progression: the song starts off slow and builds up momentum until the first chorus, where the after-chorus kicks in immediately. By this point "Black Swan" has spent half the song chugging along at a constant speed, only for the bridge to kill the momentum completely... and then a second verse comes in and the song has reverted back to its original pace before jumping back to the last chorus.
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| I wish I looked this good when having a breakdown in a forest |
Building up the momentum before killing it completely sounds like an interesting idea but it doesn't quite work - instead the second verse feels completely redundant and it makes "Black Swan" feel longer than it should be, even though in reality it's at a rather standard three minutes and thirty nine seconds. The song also has a remarkably sparse instrumental; "Black Swan" sounds very empty and no part of the song has any real intensity. Thanks to these two particular factors many have been left pretty bitter with this comeback, and I must admit upon first listen I was thoroughly underwhelmed. So what made me rewrite this article? Well, now I actually really like it. After originally writing off "Black Swan" as nothing special on the morning of its release, I spent the rest of my day in college having the song repeat itself in my head again and again, and when I listened to it again after getting home I had completely changed my mind. Now, I've apparently listened to it 30 times on my iPod alone. Whoops.
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| The real MVP in "Black Swan" |
Firstly, if there's one thing that the song gets right, it's the vocals. All of the Rainbow members sound fantastic, even Noeul and Yoonhye's incredibly basic lines are lovely, Woori's rap part thankfully isn't just a 10 second dubstep breakdown (and it very easily could have been), and the other members vocalists all perform the staccato verses and the prolonged notes in the chorus. Speaking of which, I can't see how people don't like the chorus because the drawn out lyrics are sinfully catchy and if anything it's the one part that will stick with the listener afterwards. Whilst I initially felt that the instrumental was clearly lacking a lot, the eerie emptiness actually only amplifies the overall ambiance of the song.
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| MAX1MUM SP00P |
One thing that everyone agrees on at least is that the MV is marvellous. Rainbow have done a complete 180 of the video from "Sunshine", this time going for a dark and "elegant" concept, with an interesting psychological twist which fans are lapping up. All of the members look gorgeous in the video (though Noeul's new haircut is truly unfortunate) but I personally thought Jisook and Seungah looked particularly stunning here. Surprisingly, Yoonhye gets quite a lot amount of screen time, and her individual backdrop with the broken mirrors is probably the best out of all the members'. This makes a welcome change to most Rainbow videos where she's barely ever seen and she rivals SISTAR's Dasom in terms of invisibility. The song's choreography is pretty weak and the odd floaty butt-wiggles don't fit the song, but the perfect outfits and styling more than make up for it.
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| Noeul's hair really was atrocious though, dear lord |
Tragically, "Black Swan" won't get Rainbow back in the game at all; the song has completely bombed and is nowhere to be seen on Instiz's iChart (though somehow Justin Timberlake's ancient "What Goes Around... Comes Around" is on there...), and K-netizen reactions seem to be
pretty negative overall. It's a shame that they probably won't do well with it but at least Rainbow are finally back and hopefully they'll have another comeback later on in the year as well (as long as it's before 2017).
TL;DR- "Black Swan" is without a doubt one of Rainbow's best; whilst it will probably take multiple listens to click, as soon as it does you'll be hopelessly hooked.
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