Song Review: Seventeen – Bad Influence

K-pop has been mired in early-2000s nostalgia for the past few years. In my opinion, the industry has often adopted the most boring musical trends of that era, but occasionally we’ll see a group hijack the iconic production style of Y2K superstar producers Timbaland and The Neptunes. For Seventeen’s newest album, they skipped the middleman and went straight to the source. They’ve included tracks produced by both Timbaland and The Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams, the latter of which now has a music video.

Bad Influence is one of three full-group tracks on the album and the song I was most curious to hear. Pharrell has an incredible touch when it comes to rhythm, crafting some of the 2000s’ most iconic blasts of sparse, brittle funk. On the back of this resume, I was shocked the first time I heard Bad Influence. What’s with this lethargic trap beat? If Pharrell’s name wasn’t attached to the track, I would never have pegged it as his work. The instrumental sounds generic enough to be just about anyone, lacking the magic touch that characterizes so many of The Neptunes’ early-2000s hip-hop classics. The production here feels oddly robotic and never brisk enough to elicit excitement. It’s as if the song is trying to pull itself from the mud at every turn.

This is a shame, because Bad Influence also includes some of the album’s most memorable melodies. The verses amount to very little and inhibit the song as much as the instrumental does, but I love the moments of layered vocals that offer spikes of intensity in an otherwise reserved arrangement. From what I can tell given the song’s odd structure, there are two main hooks/choruses. Both work well, from the sprawling melodic centerpiece to the slinky refrain that opens and closes the track. A remix might easily transform Bad Influence into a real highlight. Maybe we simply needed a combination of both promoted tracks. Give me the intensity of Thunder and the sinewy hookiness of Bad Influence in a single song, each compensating for the other’s weakness.

Grade: C+