When it comes to girl groups, I am such a massive fan of Mamamoo. The ladies of the group have such strong power vocals that you cannot help by fall in love with their music. As such, I am very pumped for their winter release, Mamamoo
I picked up my copy of the album off of EBay from a shop in Florida called K’Poppin USA for $24.99. Their prices are pretty fair, and they have free shipping. Plus, with E-Bates, you can get an extra 2% cash back on your purchase.
What is E-Bates?
E-Bates is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Ebates, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over 80$ back from them for purchases I was going to make
If you’ve never used EBates before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using EBates. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Sokoglam typically has 3%. These percentages Many other major retailers are on there as well.
For the purposes of reading the remainder of this post, I recommend that you put the album on in the background, and read through it while listening to the track that I am talking about. This is what I recommend for all of my song reviews.
Mamamoo Blue;S Track by Track:
가을에서 겨울로 From Fall to Winter (Intro)
So, since this track is meant to be a transition from Red Moon, I made sure that I listened to the last album before going into this track. I wanted to get the full effect! The transition from Yellow Flower to Red Moon is extremely clean, and the first tracks on both albums express key emotions of the season, so I highly anticipate this one will be the same.
I love how the introduction of this track starts with beautiful guitar arpeggios. It perfectly compliments the airy vocals that they are using in the song. Since this song’s title is the transition from fall to winter, the breathy vocals perfectly capture that. They also use lots of vocal slides that make their voices sound like when the winds pick up towards the end of fall to bring in the snow and cold air.
This short track is a perfect ode to the season, even if it is only a minute and 36 seconds long. Beautiful vocals, ladies!
No More Drama
I really enjoy how this track starts off with the electric guitar and the sliding vocals of the members that they mutated. Once they come in with the chorus at the very beginning of the track, I must say, I had chills with their strong, soulful voices. These voices were stacked into gorgeous chords with amazing percussion. The heavy drum hit with the trapping on the side of the drum and the snapping are fantastic. I also really enjoy how they use the guitar as an added percussive element in this track to keep the beat, since all of the other elements are syncopated. It helps to keep the beat and pace of the song.
Once the track gets into the second chorus, and the percussion picks up, I must say, I was shook. The song built so beautifully up to that point that when you break to the chorus, you cannot help but move to the beat. I love how there are barely any straight, on beat, sounds in the track, besides those guitar chords and the girls vocal slides in the back, until the end of the track where the instrumentation drops out, and they use silence to emphasize their point with the vocals: “No more drama. I’m over it.”
Wind Flower
So, I have already gone and reacted to the music video for this track. You will hear lots of comments on their amazing outfits, as well as their fierce vocals. You can watch it here:
As you can tell by the video, I am totally in love with this track… or maybe I’m just in love with MAMAMOO… Or both. The girls always do this excellent job of using their voices to get a message across. Their voices effortlessly soar through the notes, and on top of that, their harmonies are amazing.
Jazz and Blues are some of my favorite genres because they allow for a lot of emotion to come into the voice with lots of vocal “sass”. It is the perfect genre for girls of this kind of quality. They know how to use their voices to get across a message, without even listening to the words. If you listen to this track closely, you can easily hear it, as their voices get stronger, and more even as the track goes on, as they get over their experiences.
This is an amazing track. The instrumentation to it is impeccably simple, but the girls make it their own with their vocal color. It has that distinct MAMAMOO flair.
Hello
This track is Solar’s solo track on the album. I love how up to this point in the album, they have had this consistent theme of electric guitar chords to add consistency within the album. To make sure all of the tracks sound different, they changed the tempo, added in re-verb and different percussion elements.
This track starts off simple, and clean. Solar is nicely displaying that she has a strong singing voice, it’s not too much. When you get to the chorus, she effortlessly shows off her gorgeous range with that long, powerful “Hello”. Those notes there are hard to sustain with that much vocal color and power. They usually sit towards the top of a female’s “power” note range, before she has to switch to a lighter sound. The entire track is simple and gorgeous. It allows Solar’s voice to soar through the notes, and not be overshadowed
생각보단 괜찮아 Better Than I Thought
Another guitar chord track. Even though it shares a common element as the previous tracks, it sounds quite different because they use the instrument in a different way. Yet again, the instrumentation for this track was specifically written to let the ladies’ of MAMAMOO’s voices truly shine, and show how talented they all are. I love how even into the first chorus only simple elements are added, such as a snap, light kick drum, and the occasion echo of their vocals.
Thus far, this whole album has highlighted MAMAMOO’s vocals. This track has beautifully shown how the girls can harmonize with each other, hit notes that were meant for the heavens, and give every listener the chills as they do it. They beautifully show that music doesn’t have to be complicated for it to be good. When you have true talent you can go simple, and it will still be amazing.
Morning
This is the first track on the album that hasn’t started with guitar chords. They do get added in once we get into the first verse, but they aren’t highlighted in this track. With the editing, they added in a bit of reverb to the vocals which, when coupled with the airy vocals, gives off the perfect vibe of a groggy, weekend morning after a difficult breakup.
They sing of “losing their mind”, not wanting to see that person, but at the same time, they miss that person. The instrumentation and the vocals beautifully sit in that space where you miss someone, but you are also mad at someone. It’s a hard emotion to get across, as you have to have that perfect balance of flowing notes as well as accented notes, but they manage to get it across perfectly. They balance those heavy notes with the gorgeous vocal runs at the end of the phrases. It expertly shows the internal emotional conflict where anger can turn into longing.
K-Points: 738/5
There is a very good reason that MAMAMOO is one of my absolute favorite girl groups out there. Every time they produce an album, I feel like they bare their soul for all of us to see. They manage to portray such hard, heavy emotions with beautiful vocal color. This is a hard concept for many people to master, as it really requires you to look into your soul, and bare all of your pain in front of you. If anyone ever tells you that is easy to do, then they would be lying.
MAMAMOO manage to capture all of that pain in a beautiful, yet sad way. This is something that I feel is unique to MAMAMOO, as I have yet to see a girl group of date to portray emotional pain this well. Boy groups, on the other hand, BTOB accomplished it earlier this month, EXO ballad’s always have that feel, as well as the late Jonghyun. It takes a lot of vocal strength and talent to accomplish what these groups can do. It is one of the key factors that distinguished a singer and an artist.
So, should you get a copy of this album? If you pick up this album, you will not regret it. Musically speaking, it is a gorgeous ballad album that is perfect for right after breakup. You can sit and cry, and sing your heart out to make yourself feel better. It has the power to make you feel better. Obviously, this means that you should stream it as well, for the same reasons.
Which of the
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
