* My KPop Playlist Tracks: Momoland - Bboom Bboom
Last edited Mon Dec 30, 2019, 11:25 AM - Edit history (1)
* My KPop Playlist Tracks: Momoland – Bboom Bboom
WARNING: This is not an earworm song. It’s fricking ear crack. Beware!
Momoland is a group of recent vintage created by Duble Kick Entertainment (then spun off to their own label, MLD) in 2016 from a reality television show called, of course, Finding Momoland. Ten girls competed on live TV for seven group positions, and studio audience members voted for who stayed on the island--er, in the group, and who got the boot. Well, that's the way it was supposed to work, but it's not how it did work out in, pardon the pun, reality. The winners of the original Momoland Star Search were:
HyeBin (Lee HyeBin) - Leader and vocalist.
YeonWoo (Lee DaBin) - Rapper, vocalist and visual of the group.
Jane (Sung JiYeon) - Lead vocalist and main dancer
NaYun (Kim NaYun) - Vocalist
JooE (Lee JooWon) - Vocalist, rapper, face of the group
AhIn (Lee AhIn) - Lead vocalist
Nancy (Nancy McDonie/Lee Geuroo) - Lead dancer, vocalist, visual of the group. Yes, she's half-American, thanks to her father, but she was born in Korea. Her parents gave her both an American and a Korean name, but Nancy McDonie is her official birth name.
Simple enough, right?
Well, that was the lineup...until March 2017, when MLD decided to give one of the rejected contestants named Daisy (Yoon JungAhn) another chance, and added her to the group. Daisy became a Jill of all trades as lead rapper, lead dancer and vocalist.
But MLD wasn't done tinkering with the lineup. Only a few weeks after adding Daisy, they decided to give TaeHa (Kim TaeHa), a rejected contestant on yet another group-building reality show (Produce 101), a slot in the group. Go figure. TaeHa became a vocalist for the group.
So Momoland became the nine members seen here, and in today's video:
Left to right: HyeBin, Daisy, JooE, TaeHa, AhIn, Nancy, Jane, NaYun and YeonWoo
However...
The group has endured even more membership turmoil in their brief career.
Daisy was put on hiatus in 2019 for what the label called "personal" reasons, but everyone knew it was her defiance of music agency rules against dating without company permission. Yes, you can be punished in KPop for being normal and having a love life. But who could blame her for taking that risk, when the guy she had to have was Song YoonHyeong, a lead vocalist and visual (read: hottest of hotties) of boy band iKon:
Yeah, girlfriend won't be saying no to that anytime soon.
So after much hemming, hawing, and a bizarre series of mixed PR messages, their agencies confirmed that they were indeed dating. Despite that, Daisy remains on hiatus, and isn't expected back anytime soon. If ever. It may be safe to say that she is now no longer a member of the group at all, which is a real shame, as "Bboom Bboom" makes clear. She's the shining star of that MV, without a doubt.
The turnover didn't end there, though. TaeHa developed health problems in 2018 and went on an extended hiatus. She wound up leaving the group entirely in November of this year.
On the same day MLD announced TaeHas departure, they also revealed that YeonWoo would also leave the group to pursue acting.
So Momoland is very different now than it was on 3 January 2018, with six members not nine, as when their massive hit "Bboom Bboom" kicked off the new year with a bang. It was the song that told all KPop fans that 2018 would be one of the greatest years in KPop, ever--which 2018 is. The song is that good, for power pop:
Daisy's second verse solo may be the greatest KPop female rap performance ever recorded. It makes the entire song worth the listen.
Of course, some of you may not like "Bboom Bboom" the first time you hear it. It's definitely in that cutesie girl group category...but somehow not, given that the song is saying, "You're so hot that you better leave work right now and have sex with me" (exactly what that awesome rap verse is saying). Many of you may play the video, shrug that the song's all right for pop, or not all that great in any manner, and move on. You may even forget it an hour after it's over.
And then a week later, it will pop into your head and refuse to leave. It will drive you crazy until you listen to it again.
And again.
And again.
And then you are fricking hooked on it and can’t stop. Even if you turn off your stereo/computer/iDevice, it will stick in your head for hours until you listen to it again.
Welcome to the “Bboom Bboom” addiction that had it rack up around 300 million views within a year of its debut (the view count is close to 400 now). And those views are legit earned, not the product of video clicking farms, as skeevy YG Entertainment is rumored to house to promote their videos.
So if you don’t want a song to get in your head and drive you crazy to hear it to death, then don’t start now.
I did warn you.
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Trivia:
Fandom name: Merry-Go-Round, often shortened to Merries.
Light color: None as of yet.
Yes, the "Bboom Bboom" MV is spoofing 80s home shopping networks and early 80s MTV videos. It makes no bones about paying homage to Tony Basil's "Mickey," in particular. Hence the dog ear hairstyles, high-top socks and other early 80s cheerleader motifs.
Pay attention to the left side of the screen during the shopping channel portions of the video. It will give you a guide to who the artist is for that scene--a fun, clever and helpful way for people unfamiliar with the group to learn the names of the members. That's effective marketing.
JooE, the woman in pink and white dancing like an idiot at 1:24 (and otherwise acting like a fool over her drink)? She's making fun of a series of commercials she did for Tropicana in Korea where she dresses the same and acts the same way over their beverage. It's not every day that a KPop video lampoons the ads of someone paying one of its stars to represent them, so what she's doing is far more subversive than it seems at first.
NaYun suffers from a condition called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BBPV), which is a fancy name for getting inner ear disturbances that cause vertigo. She had to take a hiatus in the summer of 2018 because her symptoms had grown too severe for her to perform.
Daisy lived in Canada for 11 years. The more groups I cover, the more often you'll see mention of artists who have lived overseas, or who are from foreign countries. KPop members stopped being exclusively Korean well over a decade ago. That's also around the same time that the media censors quit banning coverage of anyone with dyed (especially bleached) hair, artist or not, and why we've seen an explosion of rainbow-hued do's in KPop ever since.
As if it's any surprise given how lovely she is, Nancy has been an actress and model since she was a young child, and was the video vixen in Snuper's 2017 "Stand by Me" MV.
