My love for girl groups has seemingly no limits. As of last night I have stumbled upon a new one: the South Korean 5-piece, 4Minute.

Unlike another firm favourite of mine, the recently disbanded *mega sad face*, German girl group Monrose, who sung all their tracks in English, 4Minute sing the bulk of their songs in Korean, with the occasional English word thrown in. This does mean that when singing along it makes you feel like you have a touch of Tourette’s.

*mumbling humming* FLASH! *sheepishly resumes mumbling humming*

Compared to some of the other South Korean girl groups on offer that I’ve watched on YouTube, I think 4Minute seem to be the best on offer, but clearly they’re having a bit of a girl group wave over there as there seem to be a number about at the moment.

Their début single, “Hot Issue” (below), was released in 2009 and the video is a little bit “kid’s TV” with all the bright colours, but the song is very catchy and they seem to have lifted the clock from Madonna’s “4 Minutes” video, I guess to reinforce the group’s name to the viewer; I also like the touching-the-cheek/”issue, issue, issue” bit of the choreography; you’ll have to watch the video to understand this weird comment. Anyway, check it out below:

One of their subsequent tracks from last year is called “Huh” (below), again insanely catchy even though the words for the most part make no sense to me. I could see an English version being very successful; it has a very “Pussycat Dolls” sound and vibe to it in my opinion, and the choreography is very sexy with the girls all looking great, even if the concept of the video is minimal. The song starts after 25 seconds; before then there’s just a bunch of rapping by (I’m guessing) a South Korean boy/rap group.*

Judging from their Wikipedia page they look like they’re still taking off/building up their fan-base, as they’ve only recently released (April 2011) their first proper album “4Minutes Left“, having previously released two mini albums (“For Muzik“, “Hit Your Heart“) and an EP (“Heart to Heart“) over the past two years. If, like me, you love these tracks, you may be pleased to know that you can buy the two mini albums on iTunes/Amazon, but the full length album isn’t available yet, unless you have £30+ to discard on an import. So, fill ya boots.

* EDIT: Having maintained my obsession (500+ plays in less than a week!), I purchased the rest of the 4Minute mini album, “Hit Your Heart” (totally worth it), and the rapping at the start of the “Huh” video is from the album track “Who’s Next“, featuring the South Korean group Beast.