Give 'Em Whiplash

Artistry isn’t dead, you just have to know where to find it.

My days of enjoying K-pop are long over—quite frankly, it got boring, and it got boring fast. Spending such a large portion of my very short life engaging with K-pop, it still finds its way into my feeds regularly. And that’s just what Whiplash by Aespa did. 

I don’t want to say artistry in K-Pop is dead, because it isn’t—you just have to know where to find it; SM Entertainment just has this hand of God when it comes to finding talent, and they put it to good use. The music video for Whiplash is Jesus on the Third Day: the resurrection of something that had once been thought of as dead. Every move and every shot and cut has its purpose, and if it doesn’t, it knows where to go. Everything about Whiplash is forward: not only a forward step as this is MELTMIRROR’s first time directing a K-Pop music video, but every shot moves forward—creating this sense of direction where everything falls into place just right. No minute is wasted, every scene tells a story with such minimalism that it feels heavy enough. It’s clear that MELTMIRROR (and everyone involved—art isn’t a one-man project) had a sharp vision of what they wanted, and this sharpness is reflected in the end product. Many props to everyone involved in creating such an exquisite display of artistry.

Obviously, Whiplash isn’t a bad song, my expertise just happens to be in the visual. If anything, I think it’s unfortunate just how short of a track Whiplash is (as well as the rest of the EP.) It’s a fun one though, so I think it makes up for it. It feels lacking without its visual counterpart however, so I think I’ll have to watch the music video pretty often (which is not much of an issue, I have downloaded the music video at the highest quality available—obsession is a killer (of space.))

If you wish to know someone’s thoughts on the music video who is miles ahead in knowledge compared to me, this video explains some things pretty well (however, please note this video also serves as a reaction) :-) 

Thank you for reading,

Nicholas.

(In case Spacehey is mean to me and people outside of my friends see this: this is in the context of mainstream K-pop)