Junggigo has been a veteran in the Korean music scene, debuting 13 years ago with the song “Byebyebye.” He is an established R&B singer who was nominated multiple times at the Korean Music Awards for his R&B songs and album, winning the Best R&B song with “Blind” at the 2012 awards. Late last year, Junggigo joined Starship Entertainment’s independent label Starship X, becoming the second artist on the roster after Mad Clown. Mad Clown and Soyu from Sistar also had a successful collaboration last year with “Stupid in Love;” this year, Junggigo has also joined forces with Soyu for the song, “Some.”
This method of taking an indie artist and coupling them with an idol has been working in Starship’s favor with Soyu’s collaboration with Mad Clown topping the charts last year. Early Instiz tracking shows Junggigo’s collaboration with Soyu ranking at #1 in the real time digital chart. As for “Some,” Junggigo personally describes this collaboration song as the start of a relationship where the each person plays hard to get and how aspects of this game can become confusing for both parties. The music video follows this idea and has it play out in an effective, yet humorous manner.
The song itself represents a call and answer type of dialogue between Junggigo and Soyu. They trade verses and harmonize over a chorus that exclaims their frustrations over their unclear relationship with one another. They both hold their own vocally with Junggigo’s R&B tinted vocals and Soyu’s clear inflections meshing quite well together. Lil Boi from Geeks contributes a rap verse which gives the song a reprise before the conclusion. Altogether, “Some” is a very well done R&B love song that comes right in time for Valentine’s Day.
In the video, Baro from B1A4 and Dasom from Sistar play romantic interests who communicate via text, playing hard to get while visibly hoping to go out with one another. They overcome a few obstacles before finally meeting at the end. The early moments of the MV consist of Baro and Dasom texting one another; they send text messages that are dismissive but act extremely disappointed when an answer to their dismissive texts fail their expectations and the opposite when they did garner an excitable reaction from the other party. After a couple of text messages that dismissed their meeting as a ‘date’, their get together was prolonged.
Later, they eventually meet up after encountering a massive teddy bear. Baro is especially animated, with a standout scene being when his daydream attempt to kiss an imagined Dasom on the bus is interrupted by a honk from the bus driver. These little tidbits of humor from their exaggerated expressions carry the message of the song throughout the MV. The life-sized teddy bear seemed to represent each one of them overcoming their ego. When they were both on the brink of giving up due to the seemingly lack of interest from the other party, the life-sized teddy bear gives them an added push to get them to overcome their ego and wholeheartedly meet up with the one they like.
Even though the MV was able to communicate the message of the song across, I wish they did include a greater variety of scenes to set up their initial texting communications. If they had added a scene where they contemplated sending a regular text, instead of just sending ‘indirect’ messages, they may have communicated the direction of the song and MV better. Overall, the message of the song is portrayed in a light-hearted manner which was appropriate for the context of the song and provided a funny, yet memorable MV for me.
Overall Rating: 3.9/5
What do you think about the song? And what do you think the teddy bear represented?
