Suzy's holiday dreams and the week in K-pop, January 29-February 5, 2018

There were two big comebacks this week: Suzy and BoA. After protracted negotiations with JYPE, during which Suzy threatened to leave and go out on her own, she finally stayed with the company, presumably on the condition that she could do whatever the hell she wanted. This appears to include filming the first MV of this comeback in a luxury resort with pristine beaches and a yacht in New Mexico. And a woolly beret to protect her from the harsh rays of the sun.
The title track, Holiday, is the kind of dreamy slow jam that is almost synonymous with the Suzy brand, and it's certainly better than the cliched SNSD plodder of the same name from last year, but it verges on bland for me. I prefer Sober (it has some dumb capitalisation I will not be a slave to), which has an ingenius rhythm track made of clicks and bursting bubble and pop sounds. It also has actual choreo, as opposed to Holiday, which just has Suzy swanning around looking winsome, which I admit, is nothing to sneeze at.

BoA returned with Nega Dola, a  Latin jam that leans on the Spanish, rather than the tropical side.  The stages find the legendary diva in street mode, which is always fun, but I must confess I miss the retro glamour that accompanied 2015's Kiss My Lips and the pizzazz of her recent Japanese song Jazzclub.

Sticking with SM Entertainment, Red Velvet's track for the repackage of the appropriately titled Perfect Velvet is the slinky Bad Boy, a Stereotypes/Maxx Song collaboration. Where Peek-a-Boo was idiosyncratic percussive perfection, Bad Boy takes the tempo down and strips back the production, with rippling vibe-like sounds complementing the seductive vocals. It has taken me a while but I guess I am finally a convert.

Holland, K-pop's "first gay idol" who released his debut Neverland on January 23, continued to generate buzz, with his MV racking up more than 5 million YouTube views. No mean feat for an artist with no major backing and no support inside Korea. At the time of writing, he was starting to set up interviews with local media, but so far, only one had yet been published. He has taken to Instagram twice to answer questions and it will be interesting to see how it all pans out for him. I do wonder why Holland is getting attention when it so far has eluded MRSHLL: the openly gay R&B singer signed to Bizzy and Tiger's label who also appeared on Show Me the Money. He has a lovely voice and released a really nice track last year called Circle and also did a few interviews where he spoke candidly about his sexuality, but he has not yet cut through the way Holland has. The only MV he seems to have made for Circle is this snippet at less than one minute - maybe he should have kissed a boy in his MV too. If you can listen to Jonghyun's Breathe without crying, you can hear Mrshll cover it here.

Meanwhile, Jonghyun's Shinin' was nominated for a bunch of music shows last week, winning Music Bank and Music Core.
You did well, Jjong.