Wings of My Heart 3.0

I’ve never blogged about Faye Fang Kaew beyond a couple of video posts on coinlockersbaby, but I’m really into them. They’re a three-member Thai girl group who I discovered last year through a C-ute and Hey! Say! JUMP fanvid featuring their song “Miz Call Miz U”, which is completely addictive crack. The frustrating thing is that there is virtually no English language information on them on the internet; it would seem that everything about them is in Thai. Because of that, I’m only really able to follow them as new music videos appear on Youtube. I suppose I could attempt to follow the news threads in their fan forum, but I’m not sure how much patience I’d have for trying to decipher news in a foreign language. In any case, I looked them up on Youtube recently to see if they had anything new out, and discovered the single “Help Me Please!”, which seems to have popped up in February. Curious?

FFK’s musical style would probably best be described as a combination of pop, R&B, and hip hop with a dash of crack from time to time. Miz Call Miz U was brilliant for the repetitive, catchy choruses, and the blend of singing and rapping. (The male rappers were a nice touch, too.) The song was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and the video is crack. It has a crazy girls versus boys storyline of sorts going on, complete with a ketchup fight in a school cafeteria, half-coherent text messages, and random girls taking a break from the primarily heterosexual themes to swoon over Kaew (which is very understandable). The dancing is ridiculous but entertaining, just like the rest of the video, and I love every second of it. Not all of their songs and videos are so wacky - “MSN” has a cute storyline with a girl trying to talk to the guy she likes over MSN Messenger (and the song even plays the message alert sound which is oh so nostalgic for me) and a very idolly dance, and “My Question?” is a pretty slow song that shows off their vocal abilities with a sweet plot in the video - but it’s the crazy stuff that really sets them apart from other artists I’ve encountered. That said, I love most of their stuff that I’ve seen and heard, and it was nice to see when I first looked them up that they’re not just a comedic act, but can also do some quality “normal” pop music, too. And to top it all off, they’re pretty damn stylish.

So that brings us to Help Me Please. The song is one of their more hip hoppy numbers, and the crack factor is present in the video, so this single really captures the essence of what I like about FFK. The song (you can read a translation here) seems to depict the speaker being freaked out by someone coming on too strong, and the video - plus the title of the new album, POPparazzi - expands on that by making it about the endless stalking of celebrities by the paparazzi. Both in terms of the music and video, it’s less cracktastic and frantic than Miz Call Miz U, but it fits easily into the niche the group have already carved for themselves, and it just might be a little more stylish than the former. Kaew looks more like a Kpop boy than before, which I mean 100% as a compliment because hey, I’m enjoying it, and Faye and Fang have a bit of a lolita-meets-hip hop look going on with their outfits. The urge to cosplay is awakening within me the more I look at these outfits, guys.

Throughout the video, a dorky paparazzo follows FFK around, snapping photos of their glamorous celebrity lifestyle. The depiction of the group as superstars doesn’t feel cocky, because FFK are very tongue-in-cheek about it, and humour is the whole point of the video - for the most part. Eventually, the plane the girls are on explodes and they all land in the jungle, but not before the paparazzo gets numerous shots of them falling through the air. (I told you it’s crack.) Then there’s a brilliant segue to the rapper, Storm, featured in this song, as he plays a news caster while footage from a “secret tape” of FFK in the jungle plays on the side. And then they do a photo shoot.

One of my favourite things about this video, honestly, is that Kaew, the blonde, looks more like a Kpop boy than ever, and it’s hot. (Faye is the girl with the short brown hair, and Fang is the one with the long hair.) But beyond that, the entire group seems to have fully perfected their style by this point, and they all look gorgeous. They’re stylish, talented, and they have an excellent grasp on their concept as a group and pull it off well. They sing into the camera with flirty, confident smirks; their ability to be both tongue-in-cheek and genuinely cool at the same time gives them an appeal very different from what I’m used to from my Asian pop artists. Even when Wonder Girls do something silly, like going voodoo on a guy’s ass in “Irony” or parodying the stereotypes of attractive females in “So Hot”, I still get the feeling that at the end of the day, we’re supposed to look at them as being 100% cool, sexy, and serious. FFK are so much more playful and silly, yet I can still take them seriously as a talented group with awesome music, and their ability to achieve that balance is downright impressive.

Their music is catchy and addictive. Their dance routines are cute and fun. Their on-screen personalities are infectious. What more could you want? Give FFK a try, especially if you’ve never listened to Thai music before - they may well surprise you. And perhaps then I won’t have to be alone in this fandom anymore!