Song Review: USPEER – Wicked Game

USPEER debuted seventy-eight years ago and remained one of K-pop’s most confounding one-hit wonders. Okay… that might be a slight exaggeration. They actually debuted one year ago before dropping off the face of the earth as WM Entertainment underwent a major re-shuffling. The group now finds themselves under MW Entertainment (ran by former WM CEO Lee Won Min) with the chance to finally make their long-awaited comeback.

Whether or not it was due to Won Min’s influence at WM, I considered that agency to be one of K-pop’s most creative. However, I have no idea what he’s doing with USPEER. Waiting an entire year to make your first comeback is bad enough, requiring a killer song to re-establish the group after such a long hiatus. Wicked Game is not that killer song. In fact, it’s so innocuous that it seeps in one ear and out the other before you even realize it’s over. The soundscape is clearly within the Fifty Fifty Cupid easy-listening vein, but lacks the production and melodic spark to compete.

USPEER have nice voices and you can imagine them slaying a quirky Oh My Girl style track. Instead, Wicked Game shaves any potential edge in favor of inert nothingness. The hook repeats very often, but is so drowsy and flat that it feels like the song is pulling you along in a laborious trudge rather than whisking you away to the fantasy world it tries to establish. I just can’t imagine what producer is excited to create a song like this. Where’s the spark? Where’s the pizazz? Listening to this, I feel like I’m on Ambien.

Grade: C-