MV Review- Brave Brothers Pretends to Put Some Effort Into HELLOVENUS' "I'm Ill"

Perhaps the "oh-eh-oh-eh-oh" should be switched round to "A-O-A-O-A".

Just uttering the name "Brave Brothers" is enough to make K-pop fans shudder in disgust these days, and it's not hard to see why; every song he's produced since "Miniskirt" that he hasn't given to AOA (with the exception of ZE:A's "Breathe") have clearly all been warm-up exercises for "Short Hair", "Like A Cat", and "Heart Attack". HELLOVENUS certainly weren't exempt from this list - their reboot single "Sticky Sticky" was shamelessly AOA-lite and whilst "Wiggle Wiggle" was a less obvious clone, the whole product seemed rushed and thrown together (well, since "Sticky Sticky" completely bombed, it probably was). For some reason Fantagio decided to go to Brave Brothers yet again for HELLOVENUS' new single and, pitying the flawless flops, he decides to actually try with "I'm Ill".

And yet it still sounds like an AOA single.

Dun. Dun. DUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNN.

"What? That was nothing like any of AOA's songs apart from "Heart Attack", and that's just because they're both dance tracks". But listen again, close your eyes so aren't distracted by Nara and pay attention to their voices. Suddenly, Nara, Yooyoung, and Yeoreum have been replaced by Seolhyun, Jimin, and Mina, and if it weren't for Lime and Alice you'd be forgiven for not even realising this wasn't AOA. This is mainly due to the fact that Brave Brothers has made more or less the production decisions with this as he did with "Heart Attack", from the thick clumps of auto-tune dolloped onto the members' voices to the slightly overbearing instrumental which threatens to swallow the girls whole. These two things in particular make the song a little more awkward than it should be, and altogether it means HELLOVENUS struggle to make the song theirs; sure, in K-pop music the vocalists generally tend to be carried by the song itself, but this all too apparent lack of ownership (which I don't feel is the fault of the girls at all), is the very last thing that HELLOVENUS need.

Is this one of Brave Brothers' dreams?

That said, the song is incredibly fun, and despite the noticeable absence of a bridge or climax to build up to I've been playing this song constantly over the past five days. People have been complaining that the song sounds dated, but personally I find the callbacks to early '00s Eurodance really fun and makes the song just that little bit different from the other EDM tracks we've seen lately. It's nothing original and I somehow doubt Brave Brothers tirelessly slaved away night and day to make it, but I'm glad he's at least stopped dumping his throwaway songs on them.

"Sorry, but unless you can give us a top 20 single I'm not interested"

Meanwhile, the video centres around a man at a club who keeps ditching his girlfriend as much as possible so I can check out the other women and meets the HV members. Bewitched by their divine beauty, he hopelessly chases them round the club whilst fantasizing about what their lives outside of the club might be like as if they don't spend it all worrying about how much debt they're in. You may recognise the sets used in the video, which have previously been used in Stellar's "Marionette" and 9MUSES' "Wild", though that's assuming you're not busy gawking at the members throughout the whole thing. The music video for "I'm Ill" is a polar opposite to "Wiggle Wiggle", which was so shockingly low-budget it made WA$$UP's videos look like they were produced by SM, and I am eternally grateful to Fantagio for gifting us with this treasure of an MV.

Speaking of treasure:

*shrieks*

Bless.