Release Date: 2010.07.12

As an embarrassingly bad intro of epic orchestral strings accompanies a guy who shouts out, “Queen of fierce!”, Korean chanteuse Son Dambi stumbles through a st-st-stutter of bleeps, bloops, and everything in between as a dance-pop beat comes into the forefront. Serving as no more than an introductory-styled opener, “dB Rider” is just the beginning of what the rest of misnomer, “The Queen” has to offer for trendy K-Poppers as of late. Throughout her comeback mini-album, Dambi toys with horribly applied autotune, making her and the songs sound dated. Title track “Queen” tries to be cutting-edge, but just comes off as a half-assed attempt at making something revolutionary, with it’s cut-up and re-pasted piano riffs, and at first you think that it will be a truly great song, but she just comes off as a humorous, electro copy of Lee Hyori.

This is what the critical part of me has to say about Son Dambi’s newest album. And I readily admit these are all very big problems with Dambi’s “epic” return to the industry. But as an avid lover of her last studio album, “Type B“, and of her in general, it was very hard for me to type that. I love “Queen“. I love the mismatched beats that resemble a certain American drunk autotuned whore, the hot mess of a try-hard pop-rock “Beat Up By A Girl“, with her straining voice, and of course, I embrace the absolutely beautiful (but horribly, horribly American Top 40 generic) “Can’t U See“. Dambi has found her niche, of course, copping off everyone she can find (in the case of “Can’t U See“, probably the strongest song on the mini, she’s found her place as a Gummy impersonator). It hurts me to say that, but hey, K-Pop is the most unoriginal genre of music out there (and if you can prove me wrong, tell me so). So while she’s striking out at creating the past magic she once had with Euro-trance dance-pop found on “Bad Boy” and the 80s-influenced “Saturday Night“, she’s doing quite well using her limited means to make enjoyable pop music. If it counts for anything, “Super Duper” sounds like a better version of a Britney song, and as such, is a superb closer.

Why do I love these songs if I can find such huge faults with them? Because this is the story with almost (almost) every mainstream Korean song out there nowadays. You look past the obvious rip-offs, the knockoffs, and the poorly downgraded tunes so you can delude yourself into enjoying them. It’s a harsh reality that can’t be ignored, especially in the case of the so-called “Queen”.

I’ll be repeating these songs for a while, not because I truly, deep-down love them, but because they’re highly enjoyable, albeit recycled dance-pop for the masses. But I have to be frank about the truth of it all: this is the best royalty has to offer us? No wonder I prefer J-Pop.

★★★☆☆☆