Admittedly, my knowledge of Stellar is basically non-existent. Having not watched anything done by the group beforehand, “Marionette” doesn’t offer a compelling reason to start now.
There’s trend-setting, there’s trend-hopping, and then there’s trend-numbing. 2014 has certainly been the season of sexy in K-pop. Girl’s Day, Dal Shabet, AOA, and Rainbow BLAXX have each taken a turn trying to make “sexy” into a concept with varying degrees of success. At some point when it’s stretched to its thinnest, “sexy” stops being a concept and starts to become an empty cliche. At its worst, “sexy” concepts just exists to distract from a lack of an idea, and that’s how one ends up with a music video like Stellar’s “Marionette”.
It’s a shame because the song for “Marionette” is actually pretty good. The rich and heavily emphasized synths bounce off the percussion and bass very well. Some interspersed guitars add some great edge to give the song a little bit of aggression. The high beeps that echo over the vocals is an addictive treat. The singing doesn’t try to do too much, which is a relief given the prominence of the production. The very sudden staccato notes and staggered vocals to match the sharpness of some of the rapid-fire beats becomes very enjoyable by the two and a half minute mark, and the production wisely closes with it to give “Marionette” an exhilarating finish. At its best, “Marionette” sounds like something T-ara would have done circa-2009, and that’s a fairly high bar to reach.
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But most attention will probably be paid to the video due to the sexual nature of the visuals.
Here’s the thing though: It’s boring.
The direction can’t find anything interesting to do, so it mostly sticks with the patented dance sets and individual shots that seem to be the default for nearly every girl group. The lighting is that painful soft-white that screams Hallmark card. The sets are also white for the most part, which is probably supposed to codify purity but has the unintended consequence of making “Marionette” look like the visual equivalent of boiled chicken.
Then there’s the choreography and wardrobe choices. Stellar’s biggest problems stem from the fact that nearly everyone else has beat them to the sexy punch. Thus, everything here screams of “US TOO!” and Stellar comes off like the last person without a date to prom trying desperately to find a dance partner hours beforehand. All the sexy K-pop cliches are here, from a girl lying in a bed adorned in white sheets, to a girl lying in a white bathtub, to a girl dribbling white milk all over herself, (presumably due to some partial jaw paralysis) to a girl undressing herself from a white bathrobe for … reasons. There’s nothing wrong with the visuals themselves, but everything about it is standard and unexciting.
The choreography mirrors the copy-cat ways of the visuals with a “throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks” philosophy. Butt-rubbing, butt-swaying, butt-bouncing, boob-popping, and boob-framing are employed with all the perfunctory spirit of making a grocery list. It all ends up being underwhelming once it settles in after about one minute, as there’s nothing more to “Marionette” than ‘all white everything‘ and ‘all that sexy stuff that you’ve already seen done many times over by groups that you probably enjoy more‘.
“Marionette” straddles the line between pandering and desperateness. While the song is easy to listen to, the video is an exercise in unimaginative trend-humping. And when trend-humping is done to the extent that it is here, with no deviation from the already-established formula laid out by nearly every single more popular girl group out there, it becomes numbing. For a unit that is trying to get people to pay attention to them, the worst condemnation of “Marionette” is that it manages to leave no lasting impression at all.
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In between writing reviews, The Yellow Slug can be found judging all your biases, waifus, and K-pop drama at Yellow Slug Reviews.