Song Review:: fromis_9: Supersonic- Supersonic

 

• Release date: 2024 August 12

• Album tracklist: Supersonic, Beat the Heat, Take a Chance

• Album runtime: 10 minutes

    After fourteen months, fromis_9 are back! *airhorn noises*

    No, but, seriously, I couldn't be happier for them to have a comeback. Too much time between comebacks stresses me out, and I can't imagine what it does to them. Pledis, you need to do better with them. This is only a single, after all. Hopefully we'll get something longer before the end of the year. I'm also not that pleased with the lack of promotion I've been seeing. I get that HYBE is struggling right now dealing with the various dumpster fires they're experiencing, but that doesn't change the fact that if a group is only going to have one comeback a year, it had better be promoted like only a big company can.

    In the meantime, Supersonic is very much a summer track, coming out a little late in the season, but I'm not going to be complaining. Beaches, driving with the top down with the wind in your hair, hanging out with friends, this is a song of youth. Had I been aware of fromis_9 and had this song come out when I was in college, I would have eaten it up. 

    It trots along at a cheerful pace, sliding a little at the pre-choruses in an effort to give the song more texture. The sliding is less a driving-across-black-ice kind, but more cool, action movie. If there was more urgency and growl to it, Supersonic wouldn't be too out of place in a superhero movie. As it stands, the kind of movie that this would fit well in is kind of a teen/young adult rom com. Which is fine. Heaven knows we need more of that because the kind of foibles one can have as a teenage are exactly how we learn and grow. 

    The instrumentals are light, airy, and ethereal. I enjoy the fact that the beginning part of the song, before they start singing, has same kind of bubbly, I think it's an arpeggio, that you hear in the wonderful, amazing soundtrack of Final Fantasy X, and that bubbly movement up the scale returns during the chorus. I'm not sure entirely what that musical sequence is called, but I'm a fan of it. It's synthy and friendly. There's also a high-pitched whine that only shows up in the last couple of seconds of the song, subtle, but enough of a change to prevent it from being stagnate with the repetition through the verses and the chorus.

    The girls' voices do well here with Supersonic. At no point did I have the feeling that this song could have been better with a different artist. I just wish they had been given more to work with. Still, I think they should be proud of this release, even if it likely wasn't as long as they wanted it to be. 

    The music video looks like it was filmed on the set of some sort of dystopia film. Or possibly a disaster film. Or a superhero movie. Probably the best part is the transition from day to night and the sparks getting kicked up from the choreography. Can we just take a moment to acknowledge how freaking cool that part was? And the Deadpool pose at the beginning? I enjoyed that. The transition with the water droplet was super cool too.  Despite that, the vocals, the choreography, and the visual elements of the music video match fairly well. The music itself does not. The ferocity is lacking. 

    If there's only going to be one comeback a year, fromis_9 deserves more impact than this. The group is consistently solid, and the track itself is good. It just could have been so much better.