Song Review: Teen Top – Cherry Pie

For the first time in years, I listened to Teen Top’s first full album No.1 yesterday. Apart from some classic singles, the album itself is just okay, but it opens with a hilariously overblown intro that made me miss some 2013-era K-pop’s inherent silliness. Teen Top are one of a few second-gen groups who still pop up with new music from time to time, but these songs usually exist in the shadow of their greatest hits.

I’m sure there are logistical issues at play, but I can’t understand why beloved older-gen groups can’t return with their usual collaborators in tow. Teen Top are so synonymous with Brave Brothers that it’s almost strange to hear them working on a song by anyone else. New single Cherry Pie feels as if it could have been executed by any boy group, which is not the impression you want from a long-awaited reunion track. The song plods along on a fairly rote beat that occupies that strange middle-ground between dance banger and vibey midtempo. As such, it ends up feeling pretty colorless.

To Teen Top’s credit, their performance easily competes with any of today’s hitmakers. They can still churn out a polished K-pop product and Cherry Pie doesn’t make any real missteps. The problem is that every element — from melody to production — is so plug-and-play generic that the song ends up become a total nothingburger. There’s nothing here I can’t get in a thousand other places and this overly familiar sound ends up draining the color and personality from Teen Top’s performance. It’s as if they’ve been forced to compete in today’s landscape with a Produce 101 style mission song that was never tailored to them in the first place.

Grade: C