#nothing better than a deep dive through a whole discography

[letsbealone-together]

I just discovered a new band. ✨

[yuuana]

Music Monday #249: ATEEZ - WORK release: May 2024 genre: Kpop cw: surrealism

You may have noticed some Mondays missing. That is because May was a raging shitshow and honestly I'm still trying to recover from last week, but I also fully intend to go back and fill in all the missing Music May posts over the course of however long that takes.

The thing with ATEEZ is, even with this being their tenth EP, they are still able to constantly surprise me with new sounds and styles. WORK is both something new and something that feels like a completely normal evolution of their sound. The solid thump of the drum and bass that makes you want to bounce along, the Latin flavor in the instrumentals, especially the pre-chorus with it's tempo shift, and then that almost Gershwin-y, jazzy clarinet track. Making a focus playlist around WORK made it more obvious both how well it fits in with a lot of their existing discography (Crazy Form, Arriba, and Cyberpunk all came to mind quickly, but in the end the bigger problem was trying to keep the playlist in the sweet spot on length) and how unlike the current BG trends the whole EP is. Which didn't stop me from building a playlist of 85 entries, but it did take awhile and I'll probably keep fiddling with it.

As for the video ... well that's a wild ride all right. I've filed this as a lore MV for now, but it might be stretching things a bit. It wouldn't be the first time we've had an MV in a dreamscape (Illusion anyone?), and between Seonghwa riding an ostrich and Yeosang cuddling a chicken, to say nothing of the money burgers or Money Man, this is a fairly solidly unreal/surreal setting. Meaning if this is lore, it's going to take further releases/stages to contextualize it and fit it into the story. If this is A 'verse dreaming again, well, it's a colorful dream world all right.

That said, between the lyrics themselves and comments from Hongjoong and Mingi, it's hard not to see the whole of Golden Hour Part 1 as being a bit meta - ATEEZ have been working more or less constantly from pre-debut and their usual response to being snubbed or other fandoms' attempts to drag them into stupid controversy has been to double down and work even harder. It's to the point now where every time the guys vow to "work harder to become the ATEEZ that is worthy of ATINY," I half want to reach through the internet, shake San's shoulders, and insist that no, they already are. Add on that Mingi called Siren a diss track (which, I either need a better translation or we need to talk about what he means by "diss track" XD) and an argument could definitely be made that this EP is comment on ATEEZ-the-boyband rather than ATEEZ-our-pirate-heroes.

GOLDEN HOUR Part 1 just released last Friday, positioning it poorly for its first charting week, but it is what it is. It's available now wherever you do your Kpop streaming as well as for physical sale online and in select stores. And by "select" I mean both box stores like Walmart and, if you're lucky enough to have such, local pop ups and Kpop shops.

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[haveyouseenthis]

I Wanna Have More & More | TWICE Comeback Review

TLDR: The girls are back and better than ever. 

Okay Tek, bear with me. I’m trying to work out a skeleton of sorts for these reviews. 

Pre-Release: (I’ll dive into the teasers, trailers, and my thoughts going into the comeback)

Back in 2019 TWICE started a chain reaction in their concept with the release of the EP Fancy You. ONCE finally started to get the TWICE that J.Y. Park promised us back in 2015 on SIXTEEN: a cute girl group with an edge.

The sound was different, the looks were shocking, but I was left wondering if it would be a one time thing and that we’d go back to eras like “OOH-AHH” and “Likey” (not that that would have been a bad thing in the slightest). Would Fancy You just become an outlier in TWICE’s discography? A failed experiment?

Five months later in September, I got my answer with the release of Feel Special: No, this TWICE was here to stay. Both comebacks were shocking and bright in a way I hadn’t seen the girls tackle before, but they still hung onto a hint of something, a feeling, that was so TWICE. 

“More & More” individual teasers played with a peaceful and dream-like world. Album design told a different story. It looked like the girls were going to be tackling a darker concept, or at least one with duality. 

The M/V trailer was released, and wow! When I say it gave me Alice in Wonderland vibes - yes. I was a fan from the moment it came on screen. It made perfect sense, right? All the trailers I’d seen showed a perfect utopia and all the memes my discover had been flooded with told of ONCE’s excitement of an upcoming dark concept - what encapsulates that better than Alice’s world of her own where nothing is as it seems? Right at the end of the trailer though, we’re hit with a red lensed shot of a snake wrapped around a tree branch. The edge we’d been waiting for. The hint of darkness first teased in the album designs. My mind immediately abandoned my previous Wonderland theory and linked the shot to Adam and Eve. Suddenly everything made so much more sense. The teasers, the tone of everything released so far - this peaceful garden with its bunny-rabbits and butterflies wasn’t Wonderland, but rather The Garden.

Post-Release: (a smaller section where I’ll cover how my thoughts above changed with the release of the m/v. Were my speculations correct or way off? Did it live up to the hype going into it? etc.)

With all the hype from ONCE insta I was expecting a little more “dark” than I got. While I was disappointed, I couldn’t stay mad because JYPE didn’t exactly promise ONCE as dark of a concept as we got hype for. On the contrary, JYPE gave us exactly what they showed us in the teasers. I respect that. 

While there was a very clear Garden motif going on, it wasn’t as prominent as I thought I was going to be. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed about that. I feel like there was a lot of lost potential there. Still, the little nods to it were nice. I’m absolutely a fan of the deep-voiced “more”s throughout the song.

This was absolutely Sana and Momo’s era. More on that later...

The album overall did not disappoint. My favorite song is “OXYGEN,” hands down. It’s got so much personality and could easily have been the title track (fun fact, Jihyo actually said it was almost on the tracklist for the Feel Special comeback, and could have even been the title track). Mina’s starting “na na”s give me Melanie Martinez K-12 vibes. A tranquil melody with a dangerous undertone. I love how Nayeon and Jihyo project at the beginning of their parts in that second verse “Yeah 이건 마치 Fiction / 항상 꿈꿔 왔던 오늘 같은 장면 / Feeling na na / 말로 다 할 수 없는 기적 / 꿈이라도 좋아 / 내 기분은 So high / Singing la la”. The repetition of “really” in the chorus helps tie this song down to the More & More era. In my head it feels like a nod to the “more more more more more and more” in the title track, so it fits perfectly in with the style of this era.

I could go on and on about “OXYGEN” forever, but I’d really like to mention “FIREWORK,” definitely my #2 this era (“More & More” comes in at 3rd for me, sorry Tek). This is the first Latin inspired track TWICE has done and I absolutely loved it. This song is everything IZ*ONE’s “Fiesta” should have been. It gives me major KARD “Oh NaNa” vibes. The whole song I’m waiting for Somin and Jiwoo to pop up. It sounds like something they would have done at the beginning of their career. Nayeon’s voice when she sings “I feel like a firework” at the end of the song is sassy and smooth in all the right ways. 

Visual: (My thoughts on outfits, makeup, hair, sets used in the m/v)

There isn’t a single point lacking visually in this entire m/v. The hippie-esque style of the outfits not only fits the style and tone of the song, but enhances it. The opening set is my favorite, hands down. What, with it’s too-blue pond and bedazzled trees, pink and teal plants surrounding the girls. It sets the tone right off the bat for the magical and all too perfect world we are entering. Plus, the 3x3 square formation at the beginning is perfection, it’s something I can never get enough of with groups of 9.

I thought NCT 127’s “Regular” had ruined CGI big cats in M/Vs for me - not a sentence I thought I’d ever have to type, but here we are - but I have to say, I’m really in love with Tzuyu’s scene where she is surrounded by jaguars. It took me aback at first when one of the cats appeared in the background of her close up, but when they zoomed out to give us the full shot with the five or so big cats I was… actually pleasantly surprised? They committed to the theme for her scene and I dig it. Queen Tzuyu from Feel Special has five pet jaguars and honestly, of course she does. 

Onto hair and makeup. The stylists killed it with this era, no joke. The members with my favorite hair are easily Jihyo and Sana. The pale pink suits Jihyo so well, and I was in love with it the second I saw her teaser video. Sana’s firey orange really stands out compared to the other members’, but the more it popped up the more I liked it. It really fit with the whole “everything is not as it seems” thing they had going on. It was another edge they added. I loved seeing her in the center. The bright color really drew your eye to her, and is a big part of why I say this is partly her era.

It hurts me to see my girl Jeongyeon with long hair again. Of course, she looks good regardless, but come on! JYPE, you have a living breathing girl-crush right there and you gave her short hair to Nayeon? As you can probably tell from that comment, T, I’m not exactly living for Nayeon’s short cut either. Again. Of course, she looks good, how could she not? Personally, I think the two would have looked better if they had swapped styles. I would have loved to at least seen Jeongyeon’s hair up more. The colors still look gorgeous on them though. I have always loved Nayeon with that nice, deep chocolatey look like that.

Dance: (My thoughts on the choreo *let it be known up front that I am in no way a professional dancer*, and how they worked center distribution with it)

All the members have agreed that “More & More” holds the title for the title track with the most challenging choreography. It doesn’t surprise me at all. From second number one there is already a lot going on. It’s deceivingly simple on the surface, but it requires the members to be so absolutely in sync and precise with their movements.

The dance break about two-thirds of the way through the song is what really makes me want to call this Momo’s era in addition to Sana’s. Not only did they add a dance break for her, but they added a completely different set and brand new outfits.

And it paid off.

The dance break is easily one of my favorite moments in the song. I do mean to say song, not just M/V. Often I’ll like a dance break in a M/V because I have something right there in front of me to watch, I can see the choreo that goes with it and that keeps me interested. Then I’ll listen to the song on its own and the dance break feels alien to the entire concept. Like it was literally thrown in. “More & More” doesn’t feel that way. I don’t sigh every time the dance break starts as I do with so many other songs, I get excited. I get up and dance myself because it’s so contagious. It manages to change just enough to warrant a dance break but still sounds like “More & More”.

Vocal: (My thoughts on line dist. and associated things)

The line distribution (LD), in my opinion, is godly. To have a large group like TWICE show such even LD is amazing. 

Or maybe it’s not and NCT 127 just poisoned me.

Nayeon has the most time with 14.4% of the song being sung by her, and Momo came in last with only 7.3% of lyrics. Yes, you read that right. A 9 members group only has a LD percentage gap of about 7%. In fact, the line distribution looks ideal. The main and lead positions got about half of the song, and the other half was split between the subs positions and dancers. With that in mind, it makes sense that Momo, the main dancer, has the least lines. Of course, she was well compensated raking in the most composite center time with 34.4 seconds.

That’s not to say positions always determine the LD among members. Nayeon, a lead vocalist, raked in more lines over the main vocalist Jihyo. When I first saw that I was a little taken aback. Jihyo, my main vocalist queen deserved those lines, didn’t she? 

Well, maybe not.

The more I’ve listened to the song, really taken time and let the notes and melody sink in, the more I’m glad they gave a lead more lyrics than a main. Why? Well, Nayeon and Jihyo have very different voices. First of all, Nayeon’s voice goes a little higher than Jihyo’s and sounds sharper than hers. It reminds me of a fairy; light and airy. Jihyo’s has more of a smooth, sexy, bewitching sound. It’s very full and thick, like syrup. 

That’s not to say either one of them can’t do the other. They are both extremely talented vocalists. However, I admire JYPE’s intelligence in divvying up the lines. “More & More” is a song that better fits Nayeon’s natural way of singing. Jihyo got the parts that fit her voice and she sang them well. Nayeon got the others, along with Sana, Momo, and Tzuyu, the three other members who also sing in a similar style.

Final Thoughts:

Very, very, very good. I’ve listened to the whole mini album at least once a day. I really want more comebacks with this same feel and style. They have been expanding their repertoire and pushing their limits every comeback and I don’t want to see that stop anytime soon, however, if it did, this is a good era to get stuck in.

More & More Lyrics

OXYGEN Lyrics

FIREWORK Lyrics

IZ*ONE Fiesta m/v

KARD Oh NaNa m/v