EXILE affiliated girl group Happiness set-up their own punch line with "Chao chao"

I guess LDH felt the pressure of Blackpink sucking all of the air out of every room that had a girl group occupying it, because they had their group Happiness put out their first single in 2 years back in May and now we have their 13th single "Chao chao".

They really set themselves up for the jokes if this flops though by naming their single after the Spanish term for 'Bye'.

Everything about this screams K-Pop. This song and the whole music video setup could easily be from the likes of Blackpink.

I don't like this song, but I also don't hate it. Maybe I'm getting soft. Maybe it's because I get why this song sounds as it does and the video looks the way it does. And maybe I am so damn desperate for a J-girl group to serve me Pop leaning R&B and kill it, that my standards are just lower.

LDH really want these girls to HAPPEN happen though. They gave them a budget for this video and flew them out to Los Angeles to film it. Crystal Kay is lucky if LDH even charge her PASSMO so she can get to the shoot across Tokyo, let alone the U.S.

I can't remember the last grown-ish girl group who really came through. Faky are still around, but they're in this weird place where they're not flops, but they've not really broken all the way through just yet. And with them having already had two members be rotated out whilst they were trying to break big, it doesn't really help matters.

With Happiness being part of E-girls, which is basically the female version of EXILE (it's what the E stands for), they have support and fans by association. But the quality though? Chile. LDH don't do quality consistently. The same goes for style. "Chao Chao" is a different type of sound for Happiness, who's music was just run of the mill J-Pop. But as aforementioned, following Blackpink's successes this year, their next single was always going to sound like this.