Starship Entertainment hasn’t debuted a new girl group since Sistar, and that was all the way back in 2010. In those six years, Sistar has gone on to become one of the leading female groups in kpop, so when it was announced that Starship would be teaming with Yuehua Entertainment to form Cosmic Girls, I took it as a pretty big deal. As teasers were released, it became apparent that the group would start out with a light, cutesy concept, which was fine by me since in Korea it seems as though “cutesy” is synonymous with “melodic.”

Unfortunately, MoMoMo is a case of setting up expectations and ultimately failing to deliver on them. When the song first started, I was convinced this was going to be best girl group debut since Gfriend, and that’s due to the synth driven verses, which are absolute perfection in both melody and execution. Unfortunately, as soon as MoMoMo transitions to the bridge, the sound and songwriting become generic and beholden to a very specific lighthearted template that leaves the girls without an identifiable concept of their own.

I don’t get it. The track opens with an incredible, sci-fi synth arpeggio. Its spacey nature fits the girl’s name, and would have made an absolutely stunning addition to the three and a half minutes that follow. Instead, that production element is buried deep in the mix or altogether abandoned. Why waste such a unique stamp on your song’s brief intro, if only to descend into generic pop directly after? It’s a shame, because I get the sense that MoMoMo could have been so much better had they been willing to experiment just a bit rather than play it safe and try to replicate the success of established groups.