As I was lurking around the OH forum, I happened to chance upon this particular article about netizens comments on this sixteen member girl group, Heyi Girls, that debuted earlier this year in China. Curious, I clicked on the thread link, despite the negative way of phrasing the article that may turn people off. I was rather surprised and bemused by the sudden outburst of mock and disgust for the group.
I continued to read on, how the netizens were bashing the girl group for their low standards & feeling distasteful over their ‘atrocious’ debut. Similarly, OH users expressed their mix emotions respectively in the comment section, sharing similar feelings of shock and disgust for Heyi Girls music video. Some were just laughing over the title, not really caring about the main article itself.
Thus, I’ve decided to see how ‘bad’ the music video was as well as the song myself since I couldn’t be judging based on the comments left there & I might have opinionated differently from others.
As I was waiting for the music video to load, I noticed that the girl group was hugely supported by large popular China websites such as Baidu & Tudor, and honestly speaking, I had high expectations despite the negativity that I’ve read earlier on. According to the description box, it claimed to be a ‘2016 trending debut singing/acting girl group ‘ & had debuted on 29 January earlier this year. I frowned slightly because I didn’t hear about them at all until today, the day I wrote this article, and strangely, its giving me this weird feeling for some reason. Brushing the thought away lightly, I enlarged the screen and was ready to give the music video a shot!
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTQ1NjgzMTg2OA==.html#paction
However, I found myself leaning towards the OH users & Chinese netizens opinion after watching the music video. It was really disorganized, with the weird angling and unnecessary zooming in and out, not giving the each of the sixteen members enough screen time. Oddly, there seem to be around half of the members (or maybe even less) of the members singing and the rest seem to be overshadowed, only giving off forced & cringing smiles while showing off their not-so-synchronized dance steps. The music was bland, sounding like a typical nightclub song, and the girls were singing without changing their pitch, in other words, monotone. Perhaps they were nervous, but I strongly believe that this couldn’t be the only factor that is affecting their overall performance. The singing parts were not equally divided and it seemed that only those who had the ‘looks’ were given lines while the ‘unwanted’ rest were like shadows, with the camera managing to take snips of their face/hair/outfit etc. It does give off an AKB48 type of style but in this case, the number of members is smaller & they were given tiny bit of screen time. The music video seemed to be on a tight or rather low budget as the members hang around in this staged place, a few disco balls dangling in midair (if I’m not wrong) and most importantly, the random shots of the members awkwardly dancing the repeated moves and some were even mouthing to the lyrics as well. Oh, and the seriously random English lines. I wouldn’t mind if it was in relation to the song, but boy, it was so random that I had a hard time listening through the entire song. The rap part was really thrown in randomly and the whole song was let down instantly because it didn’t flow well with the music. This was really a let down because they were supposed to kick off great and represent a ‘trending group’ and not a nugu who is starting off in a slightly bad but affordable situation.
Overall, I do feel a little sympathy for the girls to be debuting in such unacceptable conditions. They must have felt eager to debut and showcase themselves greatly, only to be overshadowed by one another which would diminish their chances of standing out from others. Of course, it has only been a little into their debut and it’s hard to determine their stand for now but I am worried that they might have to go down another path which they probably didn’t wish to take initially.
