MBC Gayo Daejejeon has all-star 99-liners cover KARA’s “Step”, CLASS:y does Koyote’s “Sad Dream” justice

Welcome to 2023, folks. Almost mercifully the year-end festivals are over, but at least we got a cover of KARA’s “STEP” out of it. Speaking of that, it sure seems like KARA’s comeback has led to the resurgence in covers of their classic songs on year-end festivals (they were done before but not like this), which I’m happy to see because it shows their considerable efforts have paid off. Anyway, a special unit they’re calling 99z covered “STEP”, which effectively necessitated that I post about it. The members would be an All-Star girl group of sorts with Oh My Girl’s Arin, Weki Meki’s Yoojung, (G)I-DLE’s Yuqi, Choi Yena, and Chuu repping for the 99 line. [embedded content] Thought they did very well, and Yuqi in particular would seem to vocally fit KARA perfectly, though they really all work. Probably one of the most well-rounded collab stages in terms of visuals, singing, and dancing this season. —— Additionally, I already love “Love Dive”, so making a rock version was always going to interest me. [embedded content] But man whoever had Wonyoung and Leeseo lip-sync to IU’s “Strawberry Moon” despite sitting down and using an old cover as backing just set them up. [embedded content] It’s seriously baffling to me just from an optics perspective, much less my ears running to go listen to IU’s version immediately. —— The other stage I enjoyed? Not from a marquee group but CLASS:y featuring host Jang Sungkyu doing Koyote’s “Sad Dream”. [embedded content] In particular the pre-chorus and chorus were just excellent and made me wish they tried out something like this themselves.