5 hours ago
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At the very end of last week, aespa made their comeback with the single Dirty Work. This new single was teased since early June, after which the group dropped a short performance video for the latest track filmed on an iPhone 16 Pro. This new track follows their massive hit Whiplash.
Dirty Work gave off a similar serious vibe that Armageddon (another 2024 track from the group) started off with. However, the group makes this new track more captivating by exuding a lot of charisma and seductively speaking to the audience through their spoken delivery. It feels low-effort, but I think this delivery pays off. Admittedly, the leading hook of the song (i.e., “Real bad business, that’s Dirty Work“) is quite catchy and has a ring to it, thanks to this delivery. I do think Hot Work would have benefited from more drive from the members. We got a sense of what that might feel like when NINGNING and WINTER started to sing during the bridge, and boy, it was good. I would have liked to hear more of this. Dirty Work features an instrumental that incorporates synth-bass sounds and boasts a sleek, hip-hop vibe. Definitely captivating as it is, but the backing worked best when there was some activity going on at once, rather than when it was minimalistic (such as in the verses). Overall, it’s a decent track, but it has a long way to go to replicate the heights of 2024. And more was needed to make Dirty Work stronger.
aespa gets down and dirty in the music video, quite literally. There is a portion of the music video where the members are rolling and crawling in the mud and pipelines. The scenes, camera work, transitions and location all make for an epic and grand video. Both the industrial aesthetics and members’ outfits were super cool.
The performance for this comeback looks just as cool as the music video did. Piecing together what I saw in the music video and short performance video, I really liked how they combined the sensual energy from the song with the hip-hop vibes I mentioned earlier. In the final chorus, the members kicked it (both figuratively and literally) by giving us something charismatic and intense to match the energy of that segment.
Song – 7.5/10
Music Video – 9/10
Performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 8.3/10
English (US) · 