Having released two pre-debut singles in the past few months, RBW is finally debuting their second girl group in 7 years. The new younger sisters to vocal queens MAMAMOO, Purple Kiss has generated a good amount of pre-debut hype, having appeared on reality show Boss in the Mirror and with some members having participated in survival programmes such as Produce 48 or Mix Nine in the past. The girls have shown us two separate sides with their pre-debut singles, a strong rock vibe with My Heart Skip a Beat as well as showcasing power vocals in ballad Can We Talk Again, and now we're finally getting their complete picture with title track Ponzona from their first mini-album "Into Violet". Let's dive in.
Meaning: "Ponzona" is Spanish for "venom" and accurately describes the vibe that the group is going for with their debut. Heck, even their very name "Purple Kiss" is meant to bring across the idea of delivering a venomous kiss. Taking a look at the lyrics, Ponzona is actually a very typical K-Pop debut track of sorts but heavily masked with dark imagery because the song is literally about the members getting people to become their fans by poisoning them with a poisonous kiss, literally the "purple kiss". This fairly innocent intention is well disguised under the girls' strong performance and the dangerously sensual lyrics, doing a good job of getting the point across while definitely enticing more people into their fanbase by capitalising on a concept that few girl groups do.
MV: The MV definitely fits the concept that Purple Kiss is going for, the dark "horror" concept that so many people crave for when it comes to girl groups. Most of the MV is filmed in very dark environments, with lots of purple (obviously) and black colours in the set pieces. While I mentioned that the song's meaning doesn't tell a specific story, there's lots of imagery in the MV itself that sort of spins a tale for us to uncover. Two things make recurring appearances throughout, with one of them being a bust of the gorgon Medusa from Greek myth, who was a beautiful woman cursed by the goddess Athena to have snakes for hair and the ability to turn anyone who looked into her eyes into stone. Another recurring image is that of spider webs or just spiders in general (in the dance break itself, the seven girls even adopt a very spider-like formation, quite similar to Red Velvet - IRENE & SEULGI's Monster), potentially depicting the story of Arachne, who challenged Athena to a weaving contest and after the goddess lost, she turned the woman into a spider as a lesson to not challenge the gods.
What's the point of including them in the MV? Of course, certain species of snakes and spiders are venomous, keeping in line with Ponzona's vibe but more importantly, I think that we're going that this is a primary setup for the mythos and lore that Purple Kiss are planning to expand on in future comebacks. One of RBW's boy groups, ONEUS, have also dabbled in Greek mythology as a concept, using the god Helios as inspiration and I have a feeling that we might get something similar with Purple Kiss. There're a couple of shots in Ponzona's MV where the girls are messing with some kind of magical items, including a rune book, and while I can't say for sure what that represents, they might be setting up a story for the future. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part and it was just there to add to the group's horror concept.
Styling: Throughout the MV itself, the girls have three specific sets of outfits and they look absolutely gorgeous in all of them. The first outfit featured has the girls decked out in black and really add to the sensuality and darkness of the song. The second outfit, while still primarily focusing on dark colours started to include a bit more brightness, with purple making its way into all the members' clothes, befitting the group's name of Purple Kiss. Finally, the last outfit dresses the girls in white, giving off a very ethereal and goddess-like vibe. Of these three outfits, only the first two were featured in the MV's dance shots and I think that it was a perfect decision to go with those because they fit the concept so well. They look absolutely stunning. If we're talking about visuals only, Yuki is the standout member for me because not only does she look amazing, she's literally dancing with dangerously thin high heels and is the only one in the group to do so. Sure some of the others are wearing heels but Yuki is literally teetering in stilettos but is still busting moves left and right perfectly. Mad respect to her.
That said, I do think there were certain things that could've been improved. For starters, I just want to talk about the choices made for Dosie and Ireh's hair. I've made mention of this in the past but I'm not the biggest fan of bangs because I think they generally just mask someone's visuals. This is the problem I had with Ireh because her bangs really aren't that flattering on her. When we saw her in previous MVs or other videos without bangs, I thought she looked way better and it accentuated her features more. That said, she's not the one with the worst hair. Oh no, that position is taken by Dosie. Now, I'm ok with short hair on female idols because some times it fits them better, like CLC's Yeeun for example. However, I'm sorry to say that this style is not flattering on Dosie at all. The combination of the very weird doll-like bob plus bangs (which again I don't really like) just don't turn out very well. It's all the more jarring because her hair is bleached blonde for this. Thankfully, being main dancer her charisma is off the charts so it makes up for this. Prior to this comeback, Dosie had long black hair which I felt suited her way better. Of course, a good number of members are already sporting long black hair so it was probably a good idea to differentiate some of the members in other ways.
While not part of the styling choice, I noticed that some fans had commented on Dosie's similarity to WJSN's Yeoreum and at first I didn't see it but upon seeing her before this comeback, my jaw absolutely dropped because they look almost the same. It's crazy too because the more I look at it the more they look the same (although Dosie has a little bit of LOONA's Olivia Hye in her as well).
Song: As I scrolled down their MV's comments section, I saw someone say that Purple Kiss is what would happen if DREAMCATCHER and (G)I-DLE had a love child. Honestly, I couldn't agree more because that's exactly what I thought once I heard Ponzona. After their first pre-debut single My Heart Skip a Beat, many people had likened them to DREAMCATCHER because of the single's strong rock concept and with their actual debut, we're moving away from the rock concept but still sticking to an extremely dark theme, very much like DREAMCATCHER's usual tracks. The (G)I-DLE vibe comes in with the very strong Latin beats throughout the song, and it's very reminiscent of tracks like Lion or Senorita.
This song is really strong for a debut and it has left many viewers stating that it feels more like a comeback from seasoned performers rather than a rookie group's first showing, which makes it all the more surprising to find out that Ponzona was actually written by Swan, Na Goeun and Yuki when they were trainees for a company evaluation. Of course, the official credits for the song indicate that it did go through some final external edits but still, the very fact that something so powerful can come out of a trainee exercise is amazing. This wasn't even meant to see the light of the debut stage but yet was ultimately picked and I think it's really telling of the girls' talents, as expected from RBW's idols.
Being a fairly slow-paced song, Ponzona does a good job of showcasing the girls' vocals, giving lots of time to main vocals Na Goeun and Swan to belt out their sultry powerful vocals. While these two undoubtedly had the most killing points in the song, especially Goeun's "purple on the top", I felt that Yuki deserves a lot of praise for her rap. While RBW doesn't have the practice of assigning main positions in their vocal, dance or rap line, Ponzona presents Yuki as main rapper and she completely kills that role, really giving her all while rapping. It's made all the more amazing because she's Japanese and yet she's able to enunciate the fast-paced rap so clearly that no one could tell the difference. Props to her once again.
Line distribution: I've praised this song a fair bit up top but things are about to change real quick because anyone with a functioning pair of ears can tell you that the line distribution is absolutely garbage. Ponzona is obscenely dominated by Goeun and Swan, with both of them taking upwards of 30% each. Comparatively, Chaein comes in third with slightly over 10%. Goeun has quite literally 10 times the lines that Ireh has and even Yuki, who I thought had way more because of her rap, only comes out just a little behind Chaein. It's disgusting but at the same time completely unsurprising. This song was very clearly meant to showcase the ability of the two main vocals and they more than hold their own in that aspect. The strange thing is the rest of the girls are also wonderful vocalists, with Park Jieun even potentially being one of the vocal line but yet she only gets a little less than 7% of the lines and some of her lines aren't even her own (being shared lines). Yes, some of the girls stand out in their own way, such as Dosie and Ireh being given center positions during the dance break or Yuki with her sick rap flow but at the same time, there's a problem when the difference between your second and third place in terms of line distribution is almost 40 seconds.
Fair line distributions have been a problem plaguing K-Pop for a while now, especially with larger groups of 7 or more members, which Purple Kiss is one of. There definitely could've been improvements made to Ponzona's terrible line distribution, like giving Chaein or Jieun a chorus. I hope that this will only happen for their debut and as the group gains traction, the line distribution gets fairer and the other girls get time to shine.
Purple Kiss is off to a promising start, with a good amount of hype having been built up over the past few months. Much like their big sisters MAMAMOO, these girls are vocal queens as well and I foresee them going very far in future. Of course, every K-Pop group meets adversity along the way and they'll be no different, although theirs has come a little early. People are starting to body shame Swan, saying that she's ugly and needs to lose weight. I was so damn pissed when I saw this. The girl is only 18 years old and yet has to deal with this kind of nonsense from people who are probably way older than her and are actually adults who feel the need to put down a young girl. Thankfully, many fans have come to her defense. Let me just say, she looks completely fine just the way she is. Yes, she isn't as slim as some of the other members but that's ok. If all idols looked the same, there would be a problem. Body shaming in K-Pop has happened so often that at this point it's something that plagues the industry and it's further perpetuated by the strict South Korean beauty standard.
All I can hope is for fans to rally around Swan and Purple Kiss, giving them the support they need to flourish as the monster rookies they are. As of right now, I can safely say that just like the girls sang, I've already become addicted to them because of their Ponzona, their venomous kiss. Thanks for reading.
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