Remember 1:43? That’s right. They’re the guys that hit the internet with a viral wave due to their very first single Merry Christmas Na that disturbed and amused a few prominent bloggers like Ade, RJ, Helga, Rico and turned a few heads into fanboying like Jepoy.

To start off with, let’s have a little introduction and recap of things.

1:43, pronounced, like the time, “one-forty three,” is a 4-male boy group in the Philippines who’s managed by Chris Cahilig Talent Services. The four young boys of the group are Yuki Sakamoto, Kim Nicolas, Goldmon Aquino and Anjo Resurrection. They recently released their first album called Time For Love under MCA Music, Inc.

So, last Saturday at ToyCon 2011, I met the entire 1:43 group (less Kim Nicolas who was not present that day) and acquired an autographed album from them, and for my bragging rights that I really have to add, with a “? Euri” written by Yuki below his signature too.

They were really nice, and were all really tall (poor me that’s so freaking small, despite the 4 inches platform boots I’m wearing T_T). And oh! I got myself a picture with the manager too! :3

I’ve listened to the entire album during my free time, the following days. And I thought of blogging about my mixed emotions about it.

I do not know how the teenagers of these days came to love Justin Bieber, and I start to wander whatever happened to “real” music, when I started hearing this song from Rebecca Black. Thankfully though, Lady Gaga was a bomb, and that you’ll still feel that there’s still hope for music with Bruno Mars and the others. But you know, back when I was in grade school, Nirvana, Incubus, X Japan, Luna Sea, Eraserheads, Rivermaya, etc. these were the “in” thing. So now, it’s the era of K-pop and here we have popping out different K-pop groups. And since it’s the “in” thing now, boy groups such as XLR8 (I hope I got that right) and 1:43 appears.

Going to my album review, Time For Love, is a mini-album. It’s only composed of 5 songs, all original, and these 5 songs’ minus one, for the rest of the tracks. I admit that I kind of chuckled a bit about the minus one thing, because the last time I bought an album with minus one included in it, was back in the days of cassette tapes.

I can’t really understand Korean, so I’m not sure about the K-pop song lyrics goes, but I’ll have you know that the song lyrics of this album is a bit too corny for my taste. I’m also not fond of the Tag-lish style of song lyrics because it adds more to the corny feel in it. Perhaps if I’m a normal high school student, I would bite it, but I suppose older generations has different tastes.

On to the bright side, however, I like the melody a lot. They’re the type of songs you’ll hum all throughout the day skipping, typical of a boy band song. And even if the song lyrics are too corny, you’ll end up singing it, regardless. One good example was Andrew (Siopao Master) who kept singing Para Kang over and over again, even though he laughs at how corny the lyrics was.

And lastly, about the vocals, they really need to work on this. They don’t sound bad, but they don’t sound that great either. It’s more like a so-so kind. I’ve seen videos of them performing live, and they sound the same as they do on CD, sometimes, a little off. I kind of understand them though, it’s really not easy to sing in front of many people. I used to sing on stage too, back in high school, being forced to join singing contests and such. They may not be as perfect as how Boyz II Men sings acapella, but at least they probably can do better than what they can do today, with a little more practice, a little coaching or voice lesson somewhere, and confidence to stand in front of a crowd of people singing.

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Thanks to Jepoy and Andrew for the pictures!