Song Review:: Hyo (Girl's Generation): Retro Romance

 

• Release date: 2024 September 26

• Album tracklist: Retro Romance

• Album runtime: 2 minutes

Girl's Generation make you feel the heat!

Sorry. 

Every time I think about the group or hear/read the name mentioned anyway, that's what immediately and inevitably pops into my head, regardless of the circumstances. I feel like I know quite a bit about them and can quote some of their moments without actually knowing anything about them, so it's a very strange situation for me. And Hyo is not one of the members whose name I knew coming in to this review,

This song reminds me a lot of the little bit of the group's songs that I've heard, but it also reminds me of later S.E.S. songs. I wouldn't call the 2000s retro because they weren't that long ago, but there is also a light 70's disco vibe to it that pops in occasionally, and that I'd call retro because it's half a century ago. Give or take. But it does sound very 2000s because of...well, something I noticed with the vocals. But then I went and thought about the instrumentals and did some comparisons Okay. I'm about to show my age here for a second. This sounds like a Bratz song. I spent so much time playing those games on the PS2 as a kid, so much so that I had some of the songs memorized without even looking at the lyrics, and this song specifically sounds like it's out of Forever Diamonds from the instrumentals, even if that album is more R&B than this song is, but the bridge from Retro Romance matches so well. All of this to say, yeah. The song is retro and unlocked some memories I haven't thought about in years.

She did an incredible job with her voice of making it sound like there's more than one person singing this song, moving between her chest, mixed, and head voices. I'm sure she sounds incredible live and in person. Second generation artists tend to. And to go back to the Bratz thing, which I'm sure is a valuable insight for everyone, her vocals in this song are perfect for the Rock Angel soundtrack. There's rapping. There's singing. And it all sounds really good. I'm not a fan of how very repetitious the song is, though. It feels like the song is all chorus, like Jeon Somi's Ice Cream. Unlike that song, in Retro Romance, the verses, when I can catch them, are fun. The line about the silver sunset in the first verse makes me smile because of the word painting. It's cute.

I could swear that Britney Spears also did a music video involving tennis. Actually, this entire music video feels like something Britney Spears could have done at her height because there are a number of outfits that Hyo wears in this music video that are so similar. Which then brings to mind the similarities between her and the idol system in South Korea. That conversation is worth being brought up, but not here, unfortunately. Instead, we're going to focus on the fact that this music video is stylistically like Britney Spears with 70s overtones. It looks like the music video would have been pretty fun to film, and also features several absurd elements, such as the cat head tennis ball and the mannequins, that also remind me of older music videos, although this time we'd be looking at second generation K-Pop, which makes sense because that's where she's from.

Also, apparently her birthday was recent so a belated Happy Birthday to her!