I happen to think Sign was a very good follow up to Abracadabra. I don't think Sixth Sense was nearly as good an album as Sound G but there are a couple really good songs on there. Cleansing Cream was one of my personal favourites from 2011 as well. I wasn't following K-Pop when BEG debuted but it seems like Hold The Line was their first song to get noticed by the mainstream, LOVE was even bigger (How Come to a lesser extent but all 3 songs were #1 on Korean charts) and then they got huge with Abracadabra. Obviously they owe a lot of their popularity to Abracadabra but I don't think they were no-names when that song was released.
They definitely weren't no names but their first few albums didn't really take off. They were seen as being "ugly" idols, their looks were often criticised and because their music was so different to what it is now their singles didn't really go along with the trends in the pop scene at that time. They were making good music though, I really enjoy their older works pre-Abracadabra. They just weren't hitting it off in the mainstream.
As for follow ups, you've gotta take into account how much of a hit Abracadabra was. I like a lot of their songs that followed that too, but they weren't of Abracadabra level success at all. They've yet to match that, it's a really high bar to reach a second time.
ummm no LOVE alone was what got them in the scene not Abracadabra. Abracadabra was what CEMENTED their status as Legends and Icons. Sign was a flawless follow up.
I'm gonna ignore the second half of this post cause it's crazy talk.
LOVE was nothing compared to Abracadabra. It was BEG moving into a more mainstream approach with their music and was a lot more poppy than what they'd done before. It fared better than their past works as a result, but Abracadabra was definitely what put them on the map. Before then they were just another girl group, not a major player like they became after that song.
Melb gets some weird weather but yeah, it's much more mild / cool than brisbane in general.
Outside of this winter that is. fuck waking up to 5 degree mornings. that shit was horrible. And is apparently going to repeat :|
But i know many koreans who move to brisbane over other areas of AU because the winter here is MUCH more mild, while the summer no worse in a general sense. But thats true for most of AU too.
Yeah I'm a Winter > Summer kind of person so even the harsh winters in Korea were much better than the Summers in my book. I can see why people who have lived with cold winters their whole lives would prefer Brisbane's climate though.
Plus Melbourne just has a way more active arts/music scene, better outdoors dining and is little bit more of a dense city which makes it...
Clear second for me. I don't think much of Brisbanes pub transport, but Melbournes is in a far worse state.
Would still prefer it over sydney easily though.
Sydney smells.
...easier to get around. Public transport in Brisbane is abysmal. It's not only inconsistent, unnecessarily difficult for tourists and newcomers and inconvenient, it's ridiculously expensive to boot. It's too difficult to get around where you need to go, and it costs too much to do so.
I found Melbourne's a lot easier, within the CBD there were always trams running that you could catch to all kinds of places for cheap (A lot of the times even free as there aren't any inspectors). I've heard it gets worse as you get further out into the suburbs, but Brisbane's is even poor inner city.
My first time in Melbourne I got around fine with just an app on my phone for directions on transport, in Brisbane I still have to double check when catching new routes and the worst part is the lack of any announcements on the buses for the next stop. If you're going to a new area you've basically gotta just press the bell and hope it's the next stop.
It's a really poor system that has needed upgrading for such a long time.
Sydney doesn't do anything for me at all, yeah.
(Not disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, I just really passionately think Brisbane's public transport stinks and the development of the CBD is really poor.)