It’s time for another album review – this time Kpopalypse is taking a look at “To Anyone” by 2NE1!
The retro album reviews continue! Eventually I’ll get to some newer stuff, but probably not anytime soon. In the meantime, enjoy this review of an album that I actually listened to voluntarily more than once back when it came out – unprecedented! Has 2ne1’s “To Anyone” held up to the test of time? Let’s see!
2NE1 – To Anyone
“To Anyone” was 2NE1’s confusingly named debut album, released in 2010. It continued their label YG Entertainment’s fine tradition of packaging albums in material that looks like it could be used to patch up an armoured vehicle. The presentation of “To Anyone” in terms of album packaging, videos, photoshoots etc all aims for the same “futuristic” aesthetic, something that wasn’t wildly different from other groups at the time but certainly was pulled off here more convincingly than most other k-pop attempts previous to 2010.
1. Can’t Nobody
Getting straight down to business, “Can’t Nobody” is a banger, full of punchy beats and screeching atonal synths, and it’s dated exceptionally well. Like with a lot of their other early songs, 2NE1 producer Teddy went in hard on the Autotune, but it actually works here because the vocal tones timbre-match the synthesizers to some extent, creating a sound that sonically fits. The exception is Bom’s parts that provide a nice contrast to the hard frequencies everywhere else, but fortunately without letting up the tempo – this song was before the days where k-pop producers en masse decided they had to stupidly drop to half-time after every verse. It’s refreshing to hear a k-pop song like this that is slamming all the way through, and even with a second generation k-pop resurgence currently underway they still rarely make them like this anymore.
2. Go Away
We’re still in squarely good territory with “Go Away”, a more melodic song that keeps up the tempo but backs down a little on the robotic edginess… except when CL is singing because I guess Autotune sounds “tough” and “empowering” or something, and CL tended to carry the torch for 2NE1’s female-empowerment-lite more than any other member. I wouldn’t have minded hearing her actual voice instead but oh well. The video that comes with this song is a lot of fun, featuring CL screaming her head off painfully (her true singing voice perhaps) and a car racing accident at the end, I think it’s supposed to be dramatic or sell the group as actresses or something but it’s actually just hilarious.
3. Clap Your Hands
Get ready for even more Autotune madness, which 2NE1 sure leaned into heavily back in the day. It was the “sound of the future” back then, at least in Korea at the time (in the west by 2010 hard Autotune in pop music was already well on the way out) and they sure embraced it here. It actually works well for the rap verses and the “tribal” breakdown or whatever the fuck it is they thought they were doing, a pity that this song also has one of the worst choruses of the group’s entire career. Fortunately the song doesn’t actually stay with the chorus very long so overall “Clap Your Hands” is more of a hit than a miss.
4. I’m Busy
Sounding like any BigBang track from the era but with female voices, that is, until it gets to the chorus and everything changes temporarily to more of a light rock feel. Then the song changes again to a 6/8 section for no reason before going back to the first sound… I’m not quite sure what the point of all that was. Overall just a bit too confused sounding to actually be any good, but it has tempo, it fits with the tracks before it and it’s listenable enough in context. Not bad but it’s clear why this is a b-track and video-happy YG didn’t bother cranking out the cameras for this one.
5. It Hurts (slow)
It’s not a k-pop album without a lame ballad, and as usual with k-pop ballads the sound is as conservative as any other group, any trace of 2NE1’s “futuristic” sound now completely gone. This could be any group’s ballad. Having said that, “It Hurts (slow)” is far from the worst ballad in k-pop, but there’s nothing here all that compelling either. You’ll remember the legitimately impressive fashion and hairstyling choices in the music video for far longer than you’ll remember what this song sounds like.
6. Love Is Ouch
Now for an example where 2NE1’s traditional Autotune overuse definitely doesn’t fit. The song starts off with big dramatic keys like a Van Halen ballad but the feeling is all ruined as soon as the robot voices crank up. It’s hard not to burst out laughing from the sheer wacky stupidity of it all, especially at the “he-ey” at 0:44, truly one of second-gen k-pop’s daftest vocal moments. Later on the beat switches into double-time which is definitely an improvement but it’s not quite enough to rescue this track from the robot-voice silliness.
7. You And I
A solo song by Park Bom, the group’s token “vocalist” and so of course it’s a ballad, but it’s actually great, and the album’s best track. Teddy strikes the right balance of synths and acoustic instruments here without heading into either boring conservatism or the trending sounds of the time, and Bom’s voice (a pleasingly distinctive one in a genre where everyone is deliberately trained to sound the same) fits like a glove over the top. The accompanying drama video is also unexpectedly moving rather than just cheesy and idiotic for once.
8. Please Don’t Go
Only CL and Minzy feature on this track, and I guess it’s a song designed to sell them as rappers or something because we’re back to the faster tempo, atonal synth work and Autotuned yelping. That’s all fair enough and it kind of works a little bit despite itself, but much like “Clap Your Hands” this song proves that you can’t really just shove a pop chorus into something like this without making it sound out of place and just kind of stupid.
9. Kiss
Dara’s solo song is overlong, boring, repetitive and just a waste of space really. It does sound just a little bit better nowadays than it did at the time thanks to at least having some semblance of a melody, but it still comes off like a very poor man’s version of a T-ara b-side. We’re also back to the cheesy and idiotic end of the YG drama videos, but unlike the song at least the visuals give your brain something to do. If nothing else I certainly wish I was listening to the fictional rock band on stage in the video rather than Dara. Oh and apparently CL turns up on this song somewhere too but everything’s so smothered in the robot voice that your guess as to which parts of the song have CL’s vocal on them are probably no better than mine.
10. Follow Me
The final track of the album is basically just “Clap Your Hands” yet again but with a slightly better beat and a chorus that actually makes sense for the type of song that it is. Not much really happens in this song but that’s fine, it’s consistent and the faux-dancehall style rhythm works well enough to get the job done. The video is way more interesting though, with some iconic moments like Dara fighting Star Wars stormtroopers for no reason and CL’s iconic facial Bedazzling.
11. I Don’t Care (reggae mix version)
An absolutely inferior and awful version of “I Don’t Care” from 2NE1’s debut EP, this supposedly “reggae mix” version barely even sounds like reggae at all thanks to the weird overly cluttered brass arrangement. It’s hard to fathom why this version of the song exists at all let alone was included on the album, but it’s there and you can skip it if you wanted, and you will.
12. Can’t Nobody (English version)
The English version of “Can’t Nobody” isn’t any different at all to the Korean version, the only change is the lyrics. Weirdly the censored “right now I don’t give a fuck” line in the Korean version at 1:44 is replaced by completely different words for the English version, which is an odd choice but that’s about as different as things get. Hey having the same song on there twice isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it’s a good song.
SPECIAL EDITION
The album never had a repackage with extra tracks but a special edition of the album did come with a second disc, a DVD that had the music videos for “Can’t Nobody”, “Go Away”, “Clap Your Hands”, “Follow Me”, and “It Hurts (slow)” on it. This special edition looks identical on the outside so good luck tracking it down if you give a shit.
FINAL THOUGHTS
2NE1 were much-hyped back in the day for being a group that was “by women, for women” and that was all image-crafting bullshit of course (the girls were not involved in songwriting in any aspect, not even a single line of lyrics), but it was fun bullshit and “To Anyone” did a pretty good job of selling that lie to the k-pop listening public. The harsh sounds were tougher than usual for the day and Teddy’s production really shined through at a time when most other highly active k-pop producers were still struggling to polish their sound. It’s easy to see in retrospect why the group were so popular, and “To Anyone” mostly delivered on the promise of a female equivalent to BigBang, even if they didn’t have BigBang’s creativity, celebrity level or nightclubbing reputation. Recommended.
That’s it for this post! Kpopalypse will return!
