Song Review:: Taemin (SHINee): Eternal- Horizon

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  • Release date: 2024 August 19
  • Album tracklist: G.O.A.T, Sexy in the Air, Horizon, The Unknown Sea, Crush, Deja Vu, Say Less
  • Album runtime: 21 minutes

Double title track incoming! Dystopia is the theme of the album!

Sexy in the Air is good. It took me a bit to fully warm up to it, and I'm still not sure I'd put it in a regular listening playlist, but I think Horizon is the superior song. Clocking in at just under three minutes, we have a futuristic, techno vibing song. If Sexy in the Air is a sleazy dystopia, this is a chromed out dystopia straight from the 1980s. This song is a Blade Runner song. It's a Tron song. But like...it's also simultaneously a Stranger Things song. I'm not kidding, if Horizon showed up in the soundtrack to that show, I'd be so unsurprised by it that I would forget it came out last month instead of forty years ago. Such is the potential brainwashing power of this song. I dig it hardcore. Give me a dance battle to this song! Please!

Unfortunately, I love the backing instrumentals so much that it overshadows Taemin in places, which is bad. The point of listening to a Taemin song is to listen to Taemin's distinct vocals. The point of watching one is to watch Taemin dance. I definitely forget Taemin is singing at some points, but I have no clue where the issue is. Is the balance bad? Are the instrumentals too awesome? I have no idea. That doesn't negate how much I actually love this song.

The music video is back online!

I have to say I'm a huge fan of the play between light and dark. The dark costumes and the light set? Very much yes. The way they're all backlit only to have the light flash across their faces serves to emphasize the choreography as well as the lyrics. Inhaling the star? Genius. There's also so much hard lighting being used that it delights me. Soft lighting is used. Without actually counting time and just looking, I'd guess that it's about half and half, which is still more than most music videos use. And not just that, but the use of positive and negative space is amazing. This isn't just a music video. This is a work of art.





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