Ice Cream Cake
Starting out with Red Velvet's official debut - that is, their debut with 5th member Yeri. This is a crazy fucking song about dessert. A bad dessert, too. I feel like ice cream is not meant to be enjoyed in the shape of a cake.
With the chromatic, music-box melody that opens it and the cheerleading chant that closes it, I feel one would easily expect this to be an ironic grown-up play on a nursery rhyme - a very "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bitch" kind of thing. Weirdly, though, it kind of isn't - rather, it doesn't rely on that irony, instead choosing to weave it into a song that is, above all, hard-hitting.
The hi-hats scream at you. The key shifts suddenly into a major chorus melody that feels minor. Wendy's "Oh, vanilla chocolate honey with a cherry on top" glitches and disintegrates into Joy's gleeful, rapid rap on a flat 7. In lieu of a bridge we have probably my favorite Red Velvet rap of all time in which Irene, whose elegant appearance suits her name, hops on the beat so forcefully that it makes you think she's mad at you, and Joy follows her with as serious a proclamation of "I have no gwanshim in that bag" as her bright tone can offer. I swear to God the world stops turning every time I hear it.
So we have a "Switch" problem on our hands. How are we meant to interpret "Ice Cream Cake", which is constantly glitching, counting down to little 8-bit explosions, and melting away into a new things, in relation to its childlike "la la las"? Perhaps I'm simply avoiding the possibility of sexual irony, given that Yeri was sixteen in 2015. I do genuinely feel, though, that this song has too much substance to be a simple wink-wink-nudge-nudge.
Don't U Wait No More
This was the first K-pop song producer Dem Jointz ever worked on, you can kind of tell it's his - it's somehow both stripped-down and busy as some of his songs tend to be. When I first listened to this song after hearing a little clip of it that intrigued me, I was really not expecting it to sound the way it did. To someone who can't understand Korean, the frequent overlap of voices and constant repetition make no sense. Having read the lyrics, though, one can understand how that overlap represents two different trains of thought -
"Wanna come closer? Tell me everything
(I keep looking at the shape of your mouth)
You come but then you stop and make a circle with your arms
(Your shoulders are stretching)"
The silly bouncing synth in the background makes the whole thing sound a little off-kilter, but RV's signature harmonies, even if they get a little dissonant at points in the chorus, ground it a little. Even so, the weirdness of the whole is emphasized by their simplicity at times, moving in thirds and sticking mostly to the tonic outside of the chorus. The song ends, suddenly as it begins, with a little cymbal crescendo that cuts off.
I fuck with this. This is quintessential red-concept (as opposed to velvet-concept, the other side of the Red Velvet coin). However, I don't think I would like it nearly as much if it weren't for this cute little performance. Look at Yeri and her silly pigtails!! Look at the hand choreography!! Simply adorable!!!!
Huff n Puff
Shit, if I was a fan of f(x) in 2015, I would be mad as fuck. For context, f(x) is a girl group under SM Entertainment that debuted in 2009. Their final album was released the year The Red, Red Velvet's first album, came out. This song sounds to me like it could have been on one of f(x)'s early-2010s albums, such as Pink Tape - but then, I do need to listen to more f(x). All I know is apparently their fans resented Red Velvet when they first debuted. I imagine this song pissed them off.
"On a sunny afternoon,
I was lazily flipping through a book
My hand stopped
On a pretty and strange picture
It softly beckoned to me to follow it,
So, without knowing,
I fell into it more and more"
Like other songs on The Red, including the title track "Dumb Dumb", "Huff n Puff" is toylike and silly, particularly in its prechoruses, which sound like buildups to a boss fight against a giant rocking horse. Even so, I expected the song to be about a love affair falling apart due to one party's frustration and childishness, or something like that. Instead, a quick read of the lyrics reveals that Red Velvet have entered Wonderland and have also been shrunk very small. Hell yeah, brother.
All of the members went crazy on this song, but especially Wendy, whose delivery of the actual phrase "huff 'n' puff" in the chorus stands out the most, and whose ad-libs are wildly impressive. Her high note on Don't make fun of me! is delivered perfectly. Whimsical Red Velvet songs such as these - called red-concept songs as opposed to velvet-concept - have a strength to them that sets them apart from other silly music of the time.
It seems like every girl group music video from the mid- to late-2010s onward has to include one scene of a girl opening a portal to another world. Even Red Velvet do it in their 2017 video for "Rookie". Only Red Velvet, though, and also f(x), can communicate innocence with such umph behind it. I am not sure what it means in the case of "Ice Cream Cake", but listening to "Huff n Puff" I can just see tiny Red Velvet scurrying around like flies, breathless and awestruck.
While Seulgi and Wendy own the song vocally, Joy's voice is just everything to me. You can hear that her rap at the end of the first prechorus about bunnies fighting was delivered with a smile.
Just look at this!!! The members perform this choreography so passionately - and it's gotta be so fun to do, if you have the knees for it.