WJSN—”La La Love”

WJSN—”La La Love”
WJ Stay? lead single
3:22
January 8th, 2019
Starship Entertainment/Yuehua Entertainment
Lyrics by Full8loom & EXY
Produced by Full8loom
Stream: Spotify

Among the crop of recent girl groups, one of the acts that’s never quite reached “essential” status with either fans or critics is WJSN, or Cosmic Girls. WJSN have consistently put out adventurous music videos, but have never gained a popular foothold. Singles from the group have been up and down in quality, but with last year’s “Save Me, Save You” they managed to hit that happy medium between sonically interesting and visually captivating. Their newest single “La La Love” proves that wasn’t a fluke.

Plenty have remarked on the similarities between “La La Love” and IZ*One’s “La Vie En Rose” thanks to a brief similarity between the monosyllabic hooks. It’s a fairly tenuous parallel to draw out further than the “la la”-s—which are folded more fully into the Cosmic Girls song to begin with. Where IZ*One’s single relied on stark, atmospheric minimalism in the production, “La La Love” is constantly billowing, riding on crisp trap-inspired snare rolls, pillowy post-dubstep bass wobbles flanging in an effervescent manner and a disco-tinged chorus that relies less on dynamics and more on a prolonged state of ecstasy.

Likewise, the MV for “La La Love” finds the girls occupying a more grounded version of their usual fantasia concepts. In a world where arcane symbolism defines the likes of your Dreamcatchers, GWSNs and of course LOONA, it feels striking that credit for trendy, esoteric melodrama hasn’t once fallen at the feet of the Cosmic Girls. “La La Love” starts with a sort of carnival fantasy scene not unlike the vibe of Twice’s “Yes or Yes,” thus making it a fairly familiar video concept in recent girl group history. Yet often we find the video diverging into abstract scenes featuring strange, disjointed symbolism like horses, mirrors, carriages, candle flames, and tarot cards.

While WJSN’s dalliances with these heady imaginative themes haven’t always translated into commercial success for the accompanying singles, their fantastical creative direction is consistently engaging, as well as inarguably influential on their peers, all of which proves its worth in the long run.