GOT7 have shown their talents far more consistently with this release, and that has shown, with their Billboard album position and their first ever music show win this week! This is high on our list of recent album recommends, has the album sampler encouraged you to listen to the full album?
GOT7 released their mini album ‘Mad’ last week, and title track, If You Do, is nearing the 6 million views mark on YouTube. So we decided to Tune In to the album and find out if it lives up to the hype.
Mad features six tracks; starting with title track If You Do, the album continues with Put Them Up, Feeling Good, Good, I Keep Looking, and ends with Tic Tic Tok. Check out the album preview video here:
Mad is an impressive album. Kpop companies tend to have a signature sound, JYPE certainly does, but interestingly Mad strays from the sound you can usually expect from JYPE.
Mad does fit the current trends of popular Kpop groups though – in fact you could probably imagine this album coming from SM group SHINee. Known for being one of the more experimental of the bigger groups in the industry there’s a whole host of SHINee reminiscent tracks on this release.
This bodes well for GOT7, they’ve captured a tried and tested sound, but could it hinder their ability to stand apart as their own act?
Probably not. Within two days of release Mad had topped the iTunes charts in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand; held number two in Taiwan and Finland; number nine in Denmark; and had reached the top 20 in the US and Canada too.
This week GOT7 have scored themselves the number one position on Billboard’s World Album Chart (maybe most surprisingly beating iKON to the spot), a position SHINee have held twice. GOT7 seems to be well on their way up the Kpop ladder to SHINee status.
So maybe the fact that Mad seems derivative of the work of others is irrelevant, after all, not much is even remotely original in Kpop, and GOT7 are succeeding.
READ MORE: [Get The Look: Unisex] GOT7 – If You Do MV
Title track If You Do has a simple mv, with minimal narrative, and fantastic displays of choreography. Its one of the most target market fitting JYPE mv for some time.
Taking another leaf out of the SM rule book seems to work well, as If You Do deserves its focus to lie upon the performance.
Put Your Hands Up is full of clever lyrics, using lines from the Miranda Rights (The American version of the police caution) and metaphors of incarceration.[su_pullquote align=”right”]You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence[/su_pullquote]
I Keep Looking employs strong vocals with differing intensity in musical accompaniment – it is an impressive example of their maturing sound.
The closing track Tic Tic Tok is the true example of their musical progression, it is a track you could easily imagine sung by older groups such as 2PM.
GOT7’s music has had to mature far faster than SHINee’s did due to the changing styles of Kpop, and the changes are all positive. They have progressed into that area of Kpop where older listeners (such as myself) should be comfortable listen to their music. GOT7 could have the potential to be JYPE’s new g.o.d, (apt given g.o.d were the inspiration for the GOT7 name, the first generation group set to be called GOT6 when their line up included JYP himself).
GOT7 have shown their talents far more consistently with this release, and that has shown, with their Billboard album position and their first ever music show win this week! This is high on our list of recent album recommends, has the album sampler encouraged you to listen to the full album?
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Have you listened to Mad? Why not add your own rating for this album at the top of our review?
