Day 4. Hello. Hope you’re holding up OK. My brain is feeling a smidge…muddled from all the girl group boppiness, the brain equivalent of changing your diet to consist of solely Skittles. Brightly coloured, sweet, but a little much sometimes. Just a little. We’re onto our fourth flavour in the K-pop rainbow bag today with IZ*ONE, so buckle up, and enjoy the end of this sweets metaphor.
Who are IZ*ONE?
They are a twelve-member (yes, twelve, again, welcome to K-pop) group under Off the Record and Swing Entertainment as well as EMI in Japan. They are the youngest group that I have looked at thus far, debuting in late 2018, and were formed as the result of the competition show Produce 48, itself a merger of Korea’s Produce 101 and Japan’s AKB48. The former, as I’ve mentioned in Weki Meki’s review, is a show that creates an idol group through public voting, choosing their name and concept as well. AKB48 is a little different, essentially being a kind of…popstar system whereby a large group of female idols is constantly performing in rotations of teams, with older members ‘graduating out’ and younger trainees earning ‘promotion’ to higher ranks. It’s a whole thing. Anyway, the main things to take away from this are that a) this group has three Japanese members, and the largest Japanese discography of any group I’ve yet looked at and b) this group had a built-in sense of popularity from being created on television. Another additional sidebar here: the group has been shadowed by scandal, when it was revealed last year that the show they were formed on had actually pre-selected the twelve winning members out of the final’s top twenty before the votes were ever cast. This isn’t really a reflection on any of the performers themselves, but did cause a temporary hiatus in 2019. Aside from this, they are billed as “hooky” and “dance-oriented” on Spotify. Well let’s see about that.
The First Song
IZ*ONE’s first release was 2018’s La Vie En Rose. Now, I know what you’re thinking, I’ve heard of that before. Sad old French lady song, no? Well of course, mon cherie, c’est vrai, mais c’est une chanson differente. Didn’t even use Google translate for that, good God I’m cultured. I was surprised when I first saw that a K-pop song had this name: is nothing sacred anymore? Oh the humanity! But then, this is an industry that had the GUMPTION to bring us a five-member girl group singing a song actually called Wannabe. Itzy, learn your Spice history. I digress. I wasn’t able to detect any direct references to the melancholic oeuvre of France’s favourite chanteuse here, and instead what I got was a floaty, sweet but honestly not that memorable tune. Also, I did notice that this group has a tendency towards the super-high, deliberately childlike singing tone, which I feared I would find in Oh My Girl, but mercifully did not. I can’t lie, I despise this type of singing. Fingers crossed there isn’t too much of it.
Five of the Big Hits
I broke my own rules here because I can’t be tamed. As this group has such a strong Japanese presence, and so deliberately markets a lot to Japan, I felt it would be a little more justified to have a Japanese song in here. Plus, being only just over 2 years old, the back catalogue isn’t huge yet. This meant I plumped for the Japanese Vampire, and the Korean Violeta, Panorama, Fiesta and Secret Story of the Swan.
Now, I don’t like to be negative, but that childish ultra-high voice does indeed feature in more of these songs, and it really annoys me. The concept here is clearly cute-leaning, and of course the members are very young (the youngest was born in August 2004, which is a time I remember very clearly because IT’S NOT THAT LONG AGO), but it particularly got to me on Vampire. Something about the arrangement of the singing on the chorus was just, I don’t know, oddly off-balance somehow, as though they were all singing without being able to hear each other. Violeta is less grating, but also rather forgettable. Panorama is higher in energy with a fun hook, and Fiesta is yet better, moving into a more straightforward bouncy bop sound.
And then we have Secret Story of the Swan. A world apart from the other songs selected, this bad boy is a straight. Up. Banger. The singing is more confident and playful, and I really enjoy the brass-style hook/refrain/whatever in the chorus, the cutesiness is gone, there’s a little bit of rap, god even the outfits in the video are more interesting. The build-up to the chorus only gives it more energy, and honestly I like this one so much it completely outweighs the muted feeling towards the other four I listened to. Bravah.
The Latest Song
IZ*ONE’s latest single is an example of the very common promotional single release found in K-pop. This one is for some phone app but honestly who cares. It’s called D-D-Dance, though ironically it doesn’t make me want to move anywhere like as much as old Swanny. We have the child voice sneaking back in again, and an attempt at staccato disco melody riffs in the chorus that doesn’t really push far enough. It’s fine, but my finger is inching back to SSOTS even as I listen again.
The Latest Album
The latest collection of songs from IZ*ONE is December 2020’s One-reeler/Act IV. There is undoubtedly a very complex explanation behind this name, as is the trend in K-pop these days, but you know and I know that I’m not going to look it up. Panorama features on this EP, as do 5 other songs, and again, I feel bad, but none of them stuck with me at all. I guess O Sole Mio was kind of fun, but the key word that keeps coming to mind is, unfortunately, generic. The only distinctive voice I can hear is that damn chirpy affectation, and there are no strong hooks or interesting tonal plays to speak of. Given that this is a group from a TV show, and that these typically have a short shelf life, it may well be that the producers don’t want to push the group into any kind of niche, but it might make things a bit more interesting. Every time I tried to listen to the EP again, my mind ended up wondering to other topics and internet pages. I can’t lie, nothing grabbed me.
Thoughts?
Principally, my thought is that IZ*ONE should, henceforth, pretty much just perform Secret Story of the Swan at every available opportunity, maybe throwing in Fiesta or Panorama for a little variety. The rest varied between fine to almost annoying. To be fair to this group, they have only been active for just over two years, and whilst in K-pop that’s still a jolly long time, it’s not really long enough to hit a stride. However long they are around for, it will be interesting to see if IZ*ONE’s sound does end up taking a more solid, confident direction. They clearly have the ability to captivate the public and produce good stuff, but from what I heard, it wasn’t exactly what I like.
But still, stream Secret Story of the Swan for good grades.
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