I received a request from Nana to review 4minute’s Heart to Heart, but since their full album was coming out later, I decided to review this instead. Let me just say I’m not a hardcore 4Minute fan; I do like some of their songs, but I get tired of their sound pretty quickly. With that being said, don’t think I’m bashing 4minute because they are pretty talented. 4MINUTES LEFT, released on 4.5.11, is 4minute’s 1st album.

The album begins with 4minutes Left, an intro with a synthesizer beat layered with the girls singing “oh oh oh” repetitively. A voice  I’m thinking Ji Yoon comes in , “There’s only 4 minutes oh~”, continues back into the “oh oh oh” before Hyunah says “4minutes left”. That leads in to into 거울아 거울아 (Mirror Mirror), the main promotional track. The song is heavily synthesized  and goes for a more sensual overall sound. The song sounds like something I’ve already heard before, the beat is not appealing and makes the song annoying and not interesting to listen to.don’t really like the rap of this song; it sounds really tacky. It’s an okay song, but not something I would put on replay.

Next is Heart to Heart, a cuter song that begins with an echo-y instrumental and soft vocals saying, “heart to heart…” The bridge is strong as Jiyoon sings with strong vocals before going into a chorus where they repeat, “Let’s have a heart to heart~” The song is better than Mirror Mirror because it has a little more personality, but once again, not something that I would add to my music library. Sweet Suga Honey! is like a weird mix of cute and R&B. Not my thing at all and it’s annoying.

모르는 ì²™ (Pretend) is an R&B ballad with a combinations of  of piano and guitar in the instrumental. From the first measures of the song, I pretty much knew I would like it. It’s an okay song, way better than the first three tracks.You Know is more of an electronic techno type of song with the girls’ vocals sounding drowned out against the instrumental. There isn’t anything about this song that makes me want to listen to it more than the required amount of times so I can properly review it.

This one’s from their first Japanese album, DIAMOND, ALREADY GONE, in Korean version. This one primarily has synthesizer and feels a bit like a lighter version of Heart to Heart, just with synthesizer as the main part of the instrumental. I like the way they sing in the intro, but the auto- tune get’s a little heavy in the verses. I like that  this is more upbeat and happier, it fits them. Another song from one of their Japanese singles, FIRST starts immediately with a rap that’s covered by the sound of a car engine before 4minute say “FIRST!” with a really bad accent (sounds more like furst). The instrumental primarily electronica once again and the mood of the song is bright as the girls sing, “you can be my first love!”This song is totally fun and sooo much better than the previous blah tracks.

HIDE&SEEK is another song off of their DIAMOND album. It’s a synthesizer song. As soon as I heard the first string of ‘oh’s ‘ I wanted to rip my ears off. I don’t understand why they would make them sing this crap. Ending the album is 나쁘게 (Badly), an R&B-ish ballad, this time with the guitar and percussion as its main instrumental. This is the kind of music they need. The instrumental reminds me of another song that I can’t think of at the moment. There are a few parts when the singing goes into screaming territory and stops sounding good.

While I follow 4minute, their songs leave a bit much to be desired. I only really liked Badly because I enjoy R&B. This album disappointed me  because I thought 4minute would really bring in some nice quality, but all I heard was generic, boring sound. I give this a 2/5 and that’s being generous.