Album Review – f(x) “Pink Tape”

It’s time for another album review – this time Kpopalypse is taking a look at “Pink Tape” by f(x)!

The backlog of old school album reviews continues… and will probably continue for a damn long time! By the time I get around to reviewing any of the recent stuff coming out it’ll probably be considered old anyway. But as promised I’m going to continue with albums that I’ve been known to generally praise for now, because it’ll be relevant for readers who often ask questions about why I (somewhat) like these albums, plus I’m such a nice positive person and I never have a bad word to say about anything. Let’s do it!

f(x) – Pink Tape

“Pink Tape” was the second full length album by SM Entertainment girl group f(x). There’s no clear concept that ties the album together sonically or lyrically, but art/visual director/stylist/courtroom fashionista/underage Brooke Shields fetishist Min Jee Hin definitely lent a certain consistent flair to the look of the project, giving the visual elements a retro-inspired charm, a foreshadowing of what she would later achieve with similarly fetishising NewJeans. This unified visual approach helped mark f(x) out as SM Entertainment’s “left field, quirky” group at the time, carving a specific niche out for them so they didn’t step on the toes of Girls’ Generation, who were so wildly successful working more traditional conceptual k-pop territory that barely anyone else even had the room to compete, even their own labelmates. To match their risk-taking visual concept, f(x) also seemed to be given songs that took more chances musically, and “Pink Tape” continued this trend, with f(x) being handed some of SM’s boldest music to date.

1. Rum Pum Pum Pum

“Rum Pum Pum Pum” is almost unprecedented in k-pop as it’s a pop song with no chordal harmonic movement whatsoever, but at the same time it’s also not something that you could call a “rap song” that relies purely on rhythmic vocals either. While there is some degree of rapping in it (Amber drops some of the least-cringe bars of the SM part of her career and actually fits in quite well), the song creates its forward motion mainly through layering stacks of palm-muted clean guitar lines and harmony vocal over a weird robotic almost-salsa beat. It works because it’s different – if this became a trend it would be one of the worst trends imaginable as every other group out there shamelessly butchered it, but as a punchy, isolated track that neither f(x) nor anybody else in k-pop has ever dared to duplicate, it still feels like a breath of fresh air over a decade after it was released.

2. Shadow

Co-written by Sophie Ellis-Bextor (yes, her) and Cathy Dennis, “Shadow” sounds nothing much like any of their other output, or any of f(x)’s other songs for that matter. It’s twinkly and cruisy and pretty nice but not going anywhere all that exciting and seems built on about 90% vibes, as a standalone listen it’s nothing much. It still works well in context of the album because the playful but mellow and fairly static groove is a nice comedown after the hyper-layered nuttiness of “Rum Pum Pum Pum”. An official Pink Tape low-budget “art film” video directed by our friend Min Hee Jin featured this song but only partially, which is a shame as they were the perfect accompaniment for each other and f(x) needed more full-length music videos, in general.

3. Pretty Girl

Often billed as a “rock song” by f(x) fans, “Pretty Girl” really isn’t anything of the sort. The combination of the big electronic beat with sub-bass and scratchy guitar combined with major-scale melodies reminds me a lot of the Red Velvet songs that would come out of SM in future years. To drive home the weird sonic combination the song even does what sounds like scale exercises during the breakdown, which doesn’t quite work, but it was certainly different for 2013. It’s definitely not the best f(x) song but it was way ahead of its time as k-pop would take a deep dive into this slower-tempo “cheesy major scales over moody beats” direction quite consistently a few years later. I guess that means f(x) paved the way.

4. Kick

All sirens, stomping beats and shouting raps, “Kick” fits pretty well into the f(x) canon and is a consistently decent song throughout. The song reaches a certain level of perky insanity quickly and then maintains it to the finish line – this track was entirely written by Hitchhiker and it shows, making your ears bleed from start to finish, but in the best kind of way. Worth noting that from 2:43 there’s a deliberately atonal Fender Rhodes solo over a rap that probably represents that accursed instrument’s only ever positive contribution to a k-pop song.

5. Signal

A straightforward disco song with no odd left turns in it. If you like disco, you’ll like this, and if you don’t, this won’t convert you. It actually sounds more like the type of song that Girls’ Generation would have been given, as they were all about incorporating disco into their sound during their “cute to sexy” image makeover in the early 2010s, but “Signal” lacks the catchiness and production style of Girls’ Generation’s top-billed features from back then. The post-Sulli f(x) line-up headed further into this direction during their final days as a group, with similar results.  It’s listenable enough, but if this is your favourite f(x) song, you’re probably not an f(x) fan in general. I guess I wouldn’t skip it if it came on while I was halfway through the chores or something, but I wouldn’t switch off the vaccuum cleaner so I could hear it better either.

6. Step

A excellent song that could have easily been a feature, “Step” starts off punchy and doesn’t let up. The song incorporates all the elements that characterise the very best f(x) songs – driving rhythm, slightly-but-not-too-much aegyo vocals, oddball but catchy keyboard and sample loops, Amber saying something or other for five seconds, and melodies that bring some sanity into the equation, it’s all here. Can I just say that in 2025 it’s such a pleasure to hear songs that don’t cut the beat down to half-time or drop the instruments back to nearly to nothing in the pre-chorus in that Blackpinkian way but instead being the tension up rather than down – modern k-pop songwriters could learn a lot from studying f(x)’s better material.

7. Goodbye, Summer ft. D.O

Only Amber, Luna and Krystal are on this track and they’re joined by Kyungsoo/D.O from EXO. Pink Tape came out at a time when EXO were only a new group who had just released their first album, so clearly this song was an attempt at some cross-promotion. Unfortunately, it stinks and it’s the first album’s genuine skip, a boring as fuck acoustic ballad that carries absolutely none of the musical style that f(x) were known for, it’s more likely to make you want to avoid listening to other SM artists rather than deliberately seek them out. Mind you this song mainly seems to be Amber’s fault, she actually had a hand in the songwriting of this one (an equally awful English version with just Amber and Eric Nam on vocals also exists), and as is fairly typical for k-pop albums, the self-penned tracks are the weakest. “But wait, isn’t Amber the rapper, what is she doing writing ballads?” you may well ask, and it seems like maybe someone at SM Entertainment should have asked this question also. I always though Amber had a great potential for harder-edged music that was never realised, and “Goodbye, Summer” should have been a warning to her that a post-f(x) solo career mainly full of R&B ballads just wasn’t ever going to fly. Either she couldn’t see the forest from the trees due to so many insiders and fans alike blowing smoke up her ass, or perhaps she’s just really into this sappy shit.

8. Airplane

A very cool song that doesn’t reveal its full hand until the killer chorus, “Airplane” is another song that wouldn’t have been out of place as a feature track, and it was actually performed on a few live TV stages, but only in a cut-down edited form because Koreans are allergic to good music I guess. What makes the song work is those huge keyboard pads and the cut-up chorus phrasing, which should sound jarring in theory but it really doesn’t at all.  The rest of the song is just window-dressing around those parts, but it’s such a good payoff that it’s worth sitting through the rest of it just to get to those deliriously good moments.

9. Toy

Another track that ventures into territory that Red Velvet would explore much deeper a few years later, “Toy” is better than every version of this major-scale chant-happy sound that Red Velvet ever got given… that is until the dubstep drop crashes in and nearly derails the entire show. The dubstep part is actually decent in isolation and would have worked fine as part of a completely different song that was fully committed to dubstep, but featured here crashing headfirst into the much faster, bouncier song that is the rest of “Toy” it just doesn’t work, slamming the brakes on everything and killing the momentum. The fact that the song is great and largely a success anyway just goes to show how good it could have been without that annoying distraction.

10. No More

A song that kicks off with serious doo-wop vibes in the vocal textures and handclap rhythms, but these type of harmonic progressions would never appear in actual doo-wop and the tune heads swiftly in very different directions. It’s both a good and a bad thing, because standard doo-wop I-vi-IV-V does get really boring so it’s good to have that variety, but the song’s new take on the standard doo-wop harmony doesn’t end up going anywhere all that special either. Some modulations from 2:10 do help raise the interest levels but by the time you’ve gotten to that point you may well have tuned out. The song lacks the quirky abrasiveness of f(x)’s better material, as well as the general catchy addictive nature of the better k-pop tracks in general. It sounds like a song that wasn’t even written with f(x) in mind… and it wasn’t, this song was apparently first shopped to Ariana Grande and rejected before SM Entertainment picked it up. Overall it’s just average and feels like it’s just on the album because SM Entertainment didn’t know what else to do with it.

11. Snapshot

A slight change of direction for the album, f(x) try a song that starts off with cool cabaret style verses that would be more expected on IU’s “Modern Times” album, before switching to a more typically “f(x)-ish” big-beat synth-driven chorus. The mash-up of styles works pretty well because the rhythm and tonal system never really changes much and because there’s that cohesive thread running through everything, all the individual parts sound good not just in isolation but also when combined (take notes, NMIXX producers). It fits on the album well enough.

12. Ending Page

Don’t be fooled by the electric guitar of the first few seconds, the final track on the album “Ending Page” is another limp acoustic ballad, and like “Goodbye, Summer” is similarly unwelcome and ill-fitting on the album. I’d say it’s the better track out of the two just due to having a little bit more life in the rhythms and slightly better melody writing, but let’s be real; nobody buys an f(x) album to hear songs like this. The song is practically inviting you to switch the album off one track early, and that’s exactly what you will do if your brain is still flirting with consciousness at this point.

FINAL THOUGHTS

“Pink Tape” is highly regarded as one of the great albums of k-pop by those fans who remember it, and with good reason. The songs mostly range from fair to excellent, the musical style is generally cohesive across the better tracks, and although there’s a bunch of different songwriters contributing, most of them are going for similar enough vibes to make the package work well as a whole. The music doesn’t quite match the visuals SM Entertainment chose for the album art (there’s nothing here musically that recalls the 1980s era Min Hee Jin is implying with the VHS-styled cover and low-res fonts) but it’s still consistent in its own way, notwithstanding the two easily-skippable dreary ballads which every k-pop album ever has to have for some unknown reason. Bonus points to SM Entertainment for not fleecing the fans with a scammy repackaged version of the album (at least not this time around).

That’s it for this post! Kpopalypse will return!