Song Review: BABYMONSTER – Sheesh

Nick

March 31

Babymonster - Sheesh The lead-up to BABYMONSTER's Sheesh has been an experience, to say the least. Every one of its teasers highlighted the same part of the song, with the girls sheeshing at us one by one over the course of what seemed like an eternity. The original purpose of teasers is to raise excitement for a song, but this felt like inoculation against that awful chorus. Anything sounds better if you've heard it enough times, right?

Sheesh marks BABYMONSTER's full-group debut, with member Ahyeon joining promotions for the first time. You already know how it sounds. Honestly, you know how any YG Entertainment girl group title track sounds before hearing it. Over the better half of this decade, the agency has found a successful template and repeated it over and over with little variation. Devoted fans seem placated by these copies of copies, giving YG no motivation to innovate the way they once did. It's a sad state of affairs, and makes their music difficult to critique. It's like trying to extract meaning from a fast food value meal.

With this in mind, it's probably better to break Sheesh into pieces and decide how they compare to the quintessential "YG song template":

Verse one: Treads water and does little to establish a unique mood. Spooky piano, for no apparent reason.
Pre-choruses: Above average! I like the stabbing percussion here. It's a nice flourish of drama right where the song needs it.
Chorus: Sheesh! Sheesh! Bleat! Baaahhh!
Second rap verse: On the surface, this is fine. However, the lyrics are incredibly cheesy -- and downright false advertising! "This is a blessing to your ears" is a laughably untrue declaration given the "sheeshes" surrounding this segment.
Bridge and climactic shift: Ah, the requisite YG tempo change. After a surprisingly dynamic bridge, this one's particularly bad. The production is leaden and the repeated "tell a friend" lyric comes across as way campier than intended. Of course, we close out with some limp "rum pum pums." How could we not?

I guess this breakdown puts Sheesh toward the bottom of an already-negligible selection of music. More than anything, I'm struck with the vacuousness of its lyrical conceit. Do these groups have anything else to say beyond "I'm the best, look at me, I'M THE BEST (insert sound effect)"? Doesn't that get old?? It's too much signifying and catch-phrasing without original ideas to back it up. To be clear, the girls of BABYMONSTER are talented and this isn't a dig on them specifically. But at this point, YG Entertainment is creatively bankrupt and we as fans need to stop rewarding them for this.