HOT XXX

The fresh faced image isn’t so fresh anymore.

Korea is just getting a flood of new girl groups this year. I could name a whole bunch of them, but many are still in the process of training and haven’t officially debuted yet, so I’m just going to ignore them like they will be ignored in the possible future.

T-ara had a good chance of being ignored too because it seems that their debut song “Good Person” for the Cinderella Man drama OST is a ballad. There is a tendency for groups debuting with ballad singles to be overlooked by the larger Korean music industry. They may get a lot of accolade for their superb singing skills and get a lot of praise for showing “potential,” but generally, until they amp themselves up in the image department and produce some catchy fluff, they get little attention.

Good thing for T-ara though because they are conforming to what seems to sell right now: Girl’s Generation (SNSD).

Do we really need more SNSD? They haven’t even gone on a break yet, and they are already announcing ANOTHER comeback album to be released in the latter part of 2009. Honestly, all the pictures released of T-ara make them look like Kara clones, but with SNSD style. The white concept is played out, and the bright, pastel color concept of the music video for the new SeeYa, Da Vichi, and T-ara’s Park Ji-yeon joint project is not so refreshing anymore. The name of their joint digital single is roughly translated to mean “Women’s Generation / Forever Love.” Mnet Media is able to churn out really promising talent with amazing vocal abilities, but they don’t seem to be very creative in the image department.

Nonetheless, I don’t doubt T-ara in the singing department…yet. Let’s just see when they actually perform on stage. If you’re curious, here are the faces of T-ara.