Review: Stellar - Sting

The queen of underrated groups, Stellar, are back! Does this song live up to the greatness of Vibrato?

Stellar's been out for a few years now but shit they have not received any recognition for any of their bomb-ass songs. Marionette and Study are both decent but Mask and Vibrato are my two favorite songs from them. 

Like many other desperate girl groups, Stellar has had to switch to promoting with a highly sexualized concept. Except I don't even know if that really catches anyone because sexy concepts are so popular nowadays. Hell, even the cute concepts are sexy as hell sometimes.

dont mind me just casually stretching here

It's really too bad people are more focused on the "controversial" imagery rather than to the quality of the song. Are the music videos being controversial for the sake of being controversial? Perhaps, but at least they have an excuse in that the erotic imagery served some sort of symbolic purpose. Of course, this plays into the whole "yea they might have a message but at the end of the day, the girls are still being sold as sexual objects to promote consumption of a material good". Is the exploration of female sexuality less genuine because of that other purpose? I don't know.

Song:

Like Mask was to Marionette, Sting comes off as a more relaxed interpretation of Vibrato. I don't know if they're similar enough to be considered different versions of the same song, but that was the overall feel I got from it. Unfortunately, while Mask was the better of the two between it and Marionette, Vibrato is much better than Sting. I think this may be because Vibrato just works as a very upbeat and active song, whereas I feel like Sting starts to accrue many similarities to "generic girl group pop song" a la Apink. 

But of course, this song's quality isn't dependent on how good it is compared to Stellar's other songs. The synthy jazzy instrumental starts off pretty interesting, but then I kind of get bored of it towards the end of the song. I very much want to love it, but then it just  doesn't keep my attention.

Rating: 7/10

Dance

Stellar isn't exactly the group with the most interesting and difficult dances. Watching the live version didn't really change this evaluation for me. Lots of sexiness of course. It's weird seeing them all happy and smiling and also knowing what the lyrics say ("you say bullshit everytime you open your mouth"  "do you have a guilty conscience?" :)))))) )

Rating: 5/10

Music Video

Continuing the trend of provocative music videos, Sting may at first glance seem like the girls are just sitting around looking sexy. But beyond the sexiness, there's an interesting message about internet bullying and hate. Basically, hate on the internet stings us, but we don't really give a fuck about it TBH

The cursors were what gave that away I think. the bugs are apparently a form of very invasive bugs that people often mistake for ladybugs. im sure you could analyze some bullshit out of that

Rating: 8/10

Styling

The outfits in the music video were interesting and didn't look like hot garbage which is always a plus. Fortunately, kpop as a whole seems to have moved past that (with guy groups being more guilty of this recently than girl groups). They covered more than the skimpy little red dresses in Vibrato, so I guess that's a plus (in these outfits at least you can't see their underwear)? They looked their best in Mask tbh

"innocent" concept - this whole idea of innocence and women is complete trash tbh but that's a post for another time

Rating: 6/10

Overall Rating: 6.5/10

Song was nice, but forgettable. There was so much love for it on the kpop subreddit, but I must wonder if this is people just blindly loving Stellar or if that love is actually deserved. For me, I have to reject it. This song is only marginally better than Marionette, and nowhere near as good as Mask or Vibrato.