RAERAE REACTS · AESPA · EXACT OFFICIAL MV
Beautiful Christmas MV React: Red Velvet and aespa Made the Company Party Earn Its Guest List
“Beautiful Christmas” puts nine women inside one company holiday single and somehow avoids turning the collaboration into a crowded attendance sheet. Red Velvet bring the warmth, comic timing and vocal elasticity of veterans who know festive music can survive a wink. aespa bring cleaner rhythmic attack and the slightly futuristic polish expected from their world. The fun comes from hearing those instincts share one room instead of forcing everybody into one seasonal personality.
Release file
Released: December 14, 2022
Runtime: 03:31
Artists: Red Velvet — Irene, Seulgi, Wendy, Joy and Yeri × aespa — Karina, Giselle, Winter and Ningning
Exact-video distinction: Official SMTOWN Red Velvet × aespa master MV iTgcp1oDk2M, separate from the stage video, album audio, teasers and fan edits
Sound: Up-tempo holiday dance-pop with sleigh-bell accents, brass color, bright drums, stacked nine-member vocals and a chorus built for communal performance
Source trail: SMTOWN official master · 
exact MVDaily+2.1KTotal views17.2M
First reaction: nine people need traffic control
A collaboration this large can reduce members to decorative glimpses.
The video uses pairings, groupings and clean visual handoffs so attention keeps moving without pretending time is equal.
Red Velvet bring holiday mischief
Irene, Seulgi, Wendy, Joy and Yeri know how to make polished seasonal material feel slightly unruly.
Their expressions stop cheer from becoming compulsory workplace enthusiasm.
aespa bring rhythmic precision
Karina, Giselle, Winter and Ningning sharpen entrances and give the arrangement a younger electronic edge.
They join the party without impersonating Red Velvet’s established chemistry.
Irene gives the frame composure
Her steadiness helps large formations read as intentional.
A small change in expression can move the mood from elegant to amused.
Seulgi connects movement and vocal character
Her physical clarity makes transitions look musical rather than logistical.
She can carry festive brightness without losing the grounded quality that distinguishes her.
Wendy keeps the vocal ceiling high
A nine-member chorus needs somebody who can add lift without making the collaboration a solo showcase.
Her projection expands the room while remaining part of the blend.
Joy gives warmth a recognizable color
Her tone and camera ease make holiday sentiment feel socially inviting.
She provides softness that still reads as personality.
Yeri supplies timing and play
Festive concepts depend on reactions between people, not just correct smiles toward camera.
Her humor makes several shared frames feel like an event rather than a brand summit.
The aespa quartet retain separate identities
Karina organizes, Giselle loosens phrasing, Winter cuts a bright line and Ningning adds vocal body.
The collaboration works because four roles remain audible inside the larger blend.
Meaning: company family language needs scrutiny
SM benefits when artists’ relationships are packaged as effortless institutional warmth.
Real collaboration can be enjoyable while viewers remember contracts, schedules and hierarchy exist outside the tinsel.
Christmas is a global marketing shortcut
Sleigh bells and red-green styling travel quickly, but they can flatten cultural and personal differences into one retail season.
The members create specificity through performance more than the lyric provides.
The choreography favors invitation
Circles, exchanged focus and shared lines make the camera feel brought into a gathering.
That social design suits a song whose strongest argument is collective pleasure.
Crew labor builds effortless abundance
Nine performers mean expanded styling, blocking, continuity, lighting and edit decisions.
The polished party is a production system, not holiday magic that appeared by itself.
The ending uses scale honestly
No single member is asked to summarize the collaboration.
The final collective image lets abundance itself become the payoff.
Four performers, four kinds of pressure
Karina gives the frame architecture and command without making leadership a permanent monopoly on attention. Giselle can make a line conversational, sly or abrasive enough to puncture immaculate world-building. Winter places a bright, controlled vocal edge through dense production and makes small expressions read at speed. Ningning brings range, warmth and a willingness to let power sound emotionally inhabited rather than merely impressive.
Those tendencies are tools, not cages. Every full-group master routes the same canonical card to all four profiles because participation is factual and should not be decided by thumbnail placement, line-count arguments or whichever member a short-form edit made trend.
What changed every time I replayed it
The first replay counted visual handoffs. The second stopped asking for mathematical equality and watched whether each member received a recognizable action, tone or relationship.
By the third watch, Red Velvet’s comic looseness and aespa’s cleaner attack sounded complementary rather than competitive.
What I kept replaying
- Irene stabilizing busy frames.
- Seulgi making transitions musical.
- Wendy lifting the collective chorus.
- Joy giving warmth a distinct tone.
- Yeri turning group shots into social scenes.
- Karina, Giselle, Winter and Ningning retaining separate aespa functions.
The larger industry question
Company collaborations are marketed as family proof, yet affection, mentorship, competition and workplace hierarchy can coexist. Fans do not need to choose between enjoying chemistry and believing every corporate relationship is naturally intimate.
“Beautiful Christmas” earns its pleasure through observable performance exchange. The nine women create warmth on camera; the company does not receive automatic moral credit for placing them in matching seasonal production.
Where it could hit harder
The lyric offers broad holiday happiness when nine different perspectives could support at least one more specific detail or comic disagreement.
Rapid distribution means several members receive moments too brief to develop. One longer mixed-group scene would deepen the sense of actual interaction.
Line distribution is not the whole participation audit
Fans often convert seconds into a moral scoreboard because time is visible and companies have histories of unequal treatment. The count can reveal patterns, but one song also distributes melodic function, camera emphasis, choreography position and relational work.
A short line may anchor a transition; a reaction shot may establish chemistry; a harmony can change the chorus without becoming a solo caption. The honest audit names limited time while examining what each person actually does with it.
Senior and junior does not mean teacher and student in every frame
Red Velvet have deeper company tenure, but the video wisely avoids staging them as instructors who approve aespa’s arrival. Both groups perform the same event from different catalogue histories.
That matters because mentorship narratives can make senior women responsible for everybody’s development while junior women are treated as permanent recipients. Collaboration allows exchange without turning age order into the entire plot.
Nine voices require arrangement, not simply stacking
More singers do not automatically create a richer chorus. Similar frequencies can blur words, strong tones can fight and every additional harmony changes how engineers preserve clarity.
The finished blend uses alternating focus and collective lift. Listeners hear abundance because vocal production decides when individuality should step forward and when it should become part of a larger seasonal texture.
Holiday joy can remain knowingly constructed
Nobody watching believes the set is a spontaneous gathering discovered by cameras. Costumes, blocking and repeated takes are visible inside the polish, yet performance can still create real pleasure.
Constructed does not mean fraudulent. The useful distinction is whether the women generate observable energy together or whether editing merely claims connection on their behalf. Here enough shared timing survives to make the party convincing.
RaeRae verdict
“Beautiful Christmas” works as collaboration because Red Velvet and aespa remain identifiable while building one chorus.
The company frame is present, but performance—not institutional family branding—creates the warmth worth replaying.
Bottom line
Red Velvet and aespa made the company party earn its guest list. “Beautiful Christmas” lands because nine women turn logistical abundance into recognizable chemistry without surrendering their group identities to one giant holiday smile.