After slightly over 5 months, FNC Entertainment's resident rookie girl group Cherry Bullet has returned with their first ever EP "Cherry Rush", which dropped yesterday. Being one of the few groups that focus on opposing concepts as per as their group name, Cherry Bullet is undoubtedly going with their "Cherry" aspect this time round, taking on a more innocent and cutesy sound. With their previous comeback Aloha Oe having been a summery song that was super catchy and fun to listen to, let's see how Love So Sweet compares.
Meaning: If it wasn't clear enough by the name of the title track, this is a love song. As the song goes, the members sing about falling in love with someone, and wanting to give them a love that's "sweeter than candy" and "chocolate", with the lyrics describing just how heart-fluttering this whole experience is. It's not a new concept in K-Pop, love songs in this vein are commonplace. Love So Sweet stays true to the "Cherry" concept that the girls are embodying this comeback and there's really nothing much deeper to the song's meaning.
MV: This is one of those MVs that doesn't have much of a storyline to it. It's simply the girls singing while dancing, combined with shots of the girls together as well as individually. The closest we get to a story is in the first and last scenes, where the girls are shown sleeping, meaning that they're probably dreaming of falling in love, as is the context of the song. It's open to our interpretation so those who just want to listen to the music can just focus on the bright and colourful MV. The MV almost abuses the use of transitions, moving from scene to scene by having the camera literally travel through a door into the next scene. It might come off as a little choppy but I think it adds to the dynamic nature of the song.
There are four set pieces in this MV and generally, I would say they capture the song's essence pretty well, some more than others. Two of the sets are coloured with bright hot pink and in those sets, we can see lots of candy jars filled to the brim and other images of sweet treats in the background. These two particular sets fit both the lyrics and the feel of the song to a T. However, the remaining two sets are a little different and don't embody the song as well. The first of these different sets is basically a room with blue as the dominant colour and is sparsely decorated with what I can only consider household furniture (things like a bookcase, mirror and houseplant). The other set is reminiscent of camping at a beach, complete with a beach chair and umbrella, and even a giant cabin with the group's logo emblazoned on the side.
Out of the four sets, the last two I mentioned don't really match the concept as well, a difference that's made even more drastic by the eye-popping design of the pink sets. That said, I can sort of explain the MV director's design choice by writing those two sets off as locations where a romance might bloom, their homes as depicted by the blue room as well as the beach setting. Another explanation I can give is that they want to have different sets for all the different costumes for the girls or vice versa (more on this in the next segment). Overall though, the MV does a good job of driving home the cutesy and bright concept behind the song.
Styling: Cherry Bullet is one of those groups where way too many of the members blow me away with their visuals, almost to an unrealistic standard. This hasn't changed with this comeback because they look stunning. I mentioned above that the MV sets correspond to the girls' outfits and that may be true, considering the girls are decked out in four different outfits to match each scene. Personally, my favourite outfits are their pink and blue ones because to me, they not only match the concept of the song best, they also fit the girls' youthful image well, at least as far as Love So Sweet goes. However, while the idea is for the girls to look cute in this MV, they do end up in more revealing clothing most of the time, which then ends up translating to being sexy. It's something that happens often to K-Pop girl groups, even if it's a cutesy concept, so I'm unsurprised that it happened again this time.
It's genuinely hard for me to pick who looked best this comeback because they truly all looked so good. There's this idea that K-Pop fans call the "Bermuda Triangle", referencing how three particular members of a group have such amazing visuals that fans get trapped in them, much like the unexplained phenomenon of the same name in real life. To me, Cherry Bullet's Bermuda Triangle consists of Yuju, Chaerin and May, whose visuals continue to stun me every single comeback. If I really had to pick, I guess one could say this is maknae May's era, her visuals are really blossoming as we go along and she looks absolutely amazing this comeback.
This next point isn't really about styling but I don't really know where else to put it so here we go. I find it adorable how much shorter leader and oldest member Haeyoon is compared to the other girls, especially in certain shots of the MV, where the height difference is made super apparent. Cherry Bullet is a fairly tall group, with almost all of them being 160cm and above less Haeyoon, who stands tall at 157cm. Even the 160cm Bora looks tall by comparison so it's even cuter to see Haeyoon dwarfed by everyone around her, especially with the Japanese "twin towers", 168cm Remi and 174cm May. I feel like that needs to be made known.
Song: This song is practically the textbook definition of cutesy. Interestingly enough, this song kind of gives me both retro vibes (further supported by one particular outfit in the MV that is indeed very retro) and also reminds me of some other cutesy girl group songs, like some Red Velvet title tracks and especially like OH MY GIRL BANHANA's debut title track Banana Allergy Monkey. Love So Sweet just has that fun, energetic and bright sound to it, a sound that I've come to love over the years.
There's lots of things to wax lyrical about this title track. First of all, we need to praise Yuju's opening lines for the song. Her deep sultry voice contrasts very well with the rest of the members and really gets you to perk up your ears for the rest of the song. Also, main vocals Haeyoon and Bora continue to display wonderful vocals throughout the song, with the chorus basically being their show. Another thing that I feel adds a lot to the song are the slight changes to its arrangement. Of course we still get the first verse, pre-chorus and chorus deal but right after the first chorus, we actually get a far truncated second verse, which leads us into the second chorus way faster. I think it's an interesting stylistic choice by the songwriters/composers and reinforces the upbeat nature of the song.
Something else that's of note is how the chorus is structured. Generally speaking, most K-Pop choruses less dance tracks are lyric-heavy, I won't dive into this because it's common knowledge. While Love So Sweet definitely isn't a dance track, I was surprised by how short the chorus actually is. We get a few lines sung by the main and lead vocals before transitioning into something that's almost an instrumental, with whistling in the background and some vocalisations by the members. It adds a certain sense of whimsy to the song and emphasises the cute concept the girls are embodying. Those who know me know that I tend to shy away from songs with choruses that have little singing but with Love So Sweet, it's a choice that works.
Line distribution: For all the good things about Cherry Bullet, they have a very glaring problem and that's their line distributions. Considering how this is an issue that has plagued K-Pop forever, I'm not really surprised. The Korean members of a group will obviously take the largest chunk in a K-Pop song but it is still disappointing to see Cherry Bullet's J-line (Remi and May) get next to nothing for lines, especially Remi. Cherry Bullet downsized from 10 to 7 members (which did a world of favours for them) but their line distributions haven't really changed too much, doing a huge disservice to the Japanese girls. May gets pushed quite a bit because she's gaining traction as the group's giant visual maknae but Remi on the other hand is barely getting any exposure, a huge shame considering how the group's previous comeback Aloha Oe was arguably her era, even if she constantly gets peanuts for lines. It has happened every single Cherry Bullet title track, Remi gets NOTHING and it annoys me to no end.
Apart from that glaring difference, the Korean members split the remaining lines quite fairly, with main vocals Bora and Haeyoon coming in 1st and 2nd respectively (as expected), followed by main rapper and center Jiwon not far behind. Yuju and Chaerin, while not getting many lines each, both have a strong impact in their song, Yuju for her opening (as I mentioned above) and Chaerin for her powerful rap. Complaining aside, Love So Sweet's line distribution is better than Aloha Oe's and since we have improvement here, I hope we see it get even fairer from here on out.
Cherry Bullet has gone through some rough patches since their debut. After their first comeback, leader Mirae, and foreign members Kokoro and Linlin went MIA before being announced to have left the group and the company due to personal reasons. While Mirae is now preparing to redebut in Pixy under the stage name Ella, we have no news from the other two. After that change, Cherry Bullet would undergo a drastic change by indulging fans with our first taste of their "Bullet" concept. Evidently dark and girl crush, it's something that I hope we can get more of in future because it fit the members so well. In all honesty, the girls probably have some amount of pressure on them now as essentially FNC's only girl group, with seniors AOA as good as disbanded following Jimin's bullying scandal and Yuna's contract ending. It hasn't been easy for the girls and I hope that they will continue to soar and put out great music, capturing more fans' hearts with their fairly unique concept and in return, they'll get showered with a Love So Sweet. Thanks for reading.
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