Team K - Kill This Love Review

    Hello, today's Boys Planet performance review is on Team K's Kill This Love. This performance has one of my favorite trainees, Park Gunwook! He's a really great all-rounder (meaning he's skilled in singing, dancing and rapping) so even though this isn't his best performance on the show in my opinion, I think he still did great. He's the center, or killing part, of this performance. You can usually tell who has the killing part by looking at their clothes-- the person with the killing part often has an outfit that stands out from the rest. In this case, while all the others have something like a dress shirt on, Gunwook is wearing something that looks more like atheleisure.

Here's the link to the performance: Team K - Kill This Love

No more stalling-- let's begin!

----

    First off, I want to nitpick at something... I really don't like the blue theme or the outfits. 😂 Team G tends to have performances with a red/pink theme while Team K tends to have blue themes, but I'm really not into the blue theme for Kill This Love. I think that this blue theme, along with their outfits, are few reasons why Team K lags behind Team G. While I love Gunwook's dancing, I think his outfit is the worst out of them all, unfortunately. Why does his outfit look like athleisure? How does that fit into the theme of Kill This Love??

    Okay, now actually watching the performance, I feel like Gunwook's line, "Black Venom in your area" wasn't as impactful as I was expecting... I think his voice just doesn't sound mature enough for the type of song or have the same kind of spice that Keita's. It makes the intro a little lackluster, but I think it was okay enough to keep going!

    Moving into Hwanhee's introduction part, I think he did good! While I'm not the biggest fan of his voice, I think he delivered his lines nice. They sounded a bit unstable, but I think his enunciation was decent. I also think the others performed their dance parts quite cleanly and timely as well.

    At 0:36, Keonhee's rap was decent! To be honest, it wasn't anything special to me, but I thought the delivery was decent enough to sound like there wasn't anything wrong with it. (Off topic, but one of my favorite rappers in the K-pop industry is Seo Changbin from Stray Kids. His rapping is incredible, I highly recommend listening to him! :D) However, I do think Keonhee's "uh" sounds after each part sounded like a bit too much, to the point that it was a little uncomfortable to listen to. Gunwook's short line in between the rap was also something that sounded a bit off to me, the flow and tone of it just didn't sound like it fit. In my opinion, Team K's performance looks a bit more amateur-ish compared to Team G's. For some context background though, most of Team K's members happen to have less experience and training compared to Team G's members so I would say it makes that my opinion isn't completely wrong. But the flow of the rapping after Gunwook's part went really well! I thought his flow, rhythm, and enunciation were great!

    The melody comes back again at 0:50, but the singer's pitch here is often flat, making his performance sound not so great. In comparison to Team G's, since Team G went first, this part was very lackluster. This is especially due to the lack of Team G's Zhang Hao's uniqueness during this part (if you remember, it was the part where Zhang Hao layered a harmony over Matthew's part)! All of their voices (possibly with Hwanhee as an exception) sound very unstable and tired at this part, which is understandable because dancing and singing at the same time is tiring and also the fact that Kill This Love was originally written in a female key. However, professional idols can perform well without showing hints of exhaustion, which indicates that the members of Team K's Kill This Love team aren't ready to become professionals yet.

    Despite all the criticisms I've given so far, the dance break and chorus at 1:18 is the highlight of their performance! Their dancing looks clean and powerful, especially with Gunwook in the middle. Gunwook's powerful dancing style is actually perfect for this song, it really makes the impact larger. The other members behind him are also quite good too. Often times when something in the background looks off, it can affect the overall performance despite not being the center of attention. However, I don't see much background error here so it looks good!

    At 1:37, Keonhee's English pronunciation was actually quite good! I would say his pronunciation is a bit better than Keita's (from Team G) pronunciation. I could understand Keonhee's English more than Keita, but I think Keita's rap was more impressive. Afterwards, Gunwook comes in for a bit again. I know that Gunwook can rap well (as seen in the Tomboy performance that I haven't covered yet!), but I feel like he just didn't really do as great in this one. The melody comes back in again and both vocals were sounding great! The second vocalist's voice cracks just a little bit though at the end, which is so unfortunate!! 😭 They were doing so well!!! The following vocals also begin to falter and lose the pitch... I think it's because the pitch gets quite high there and it becomes hard for them to reach.

    Hwanhee holds the main vocal part, which is the same part as Zhang Hao from Team G. I don't think Hwanhee's "We all commit to love that makes you cry" doesn't sound as good nor as iconic as Zhang Hao's but the high note and harmony that follows it is quite nice! Team G actually doesn't have that in their performance, nor does it happen in the original song. This is the spice of Team K! Hwanhee's high note might not be as high as Ariana Grande or Mariah Carey can go, but I think it's still very fitting for the song. His voice also sounds like it cracks right at the end, but I think it still sounds quite good with it. I would say this is another highlight of their performance!

    Overall, while I had many criticisms for this performance, I thought it was still a decent performance. I wouldn't pay to see this performance, unlike how I would definitely pay to see Team G's Kill This Love performance, but I think they still did well. Kill This Love was the challenge song for this round, so they did really well for the short amount of time they were given to practice this difficult song.

----

    That's it for Team K's Kill This Love! I feel like Team G is the clear definite winner, as the audience in the show thought so as well, but Team K still put up a good fight. Thank you for reading!