Song Review:: DreamNote: Joyful Green- Joyful Green (Korean Version)

• Release date: 2024 October 23

• Album tracklist: Joyful Green (Korean Version), Joyful Green (Japanese Version)

• Album runtime: 6 minutes

 This song was the group's Japanese debut a few weeks ago. You might then be forgiven for thinking this is a young group, but they debuted six years ago, and are only a couple of weeks younger than ATEEZ, though the average member age of this group is also younger considering DreamNote's leader and ATEEZ's maknae are both 00z. I'd say that their Japanese debut is overdue in this case, but I'm curious to see what the song is like. I've never heard of this group before, and that's the joy of this little blog of mine.

As a side note, they have a song called Ghost, and if I like this one, I am 100% checking out that one to see if it'll do well in my Halloween playlist that I'm building. 

I'm also squinting at that runtime because I had to round up to it. This under-three-minutes garbage is not my favorite.

As expected, the instrumentals sound like they belong to an anime theme. The instrumentals have moments where they step back to let the members' voices shine. As bright as the instrumentals are, there's also an underwater bubbliness to them, which gives them a nice depth and tone. Also, interestingly, the very start of the song has an instrument that is reminiscent of a ticking clock, but it also clearly isn't one. The tonal shift about two minutes in is a delight, as is the part a little later, at the start of the very brief ad-libs, where things get changed, instead of just having layers added. 

I accidentally forgot to hit "repeat 1", and the Japanese version started playing. Oh, my word, do the vocals just match the instrumentals when it's in Japanese.  I couldn't focus on anything else for about thirty seconds because it's been a very long time since I've heard anything that just matched like that. I almost think I like that version better, but I'm not reviewing the Japanese debut. Even when the members are singing with higher notes, I'm impressed to hear a solid grounding in their vocals. Those voices are well-supported. Even the brief ad-libs that flash up above the rest of the vocals and are much higher have the breath support that I expect to hear. And! The best of all! We actually get some vibrato from the vocalists. This group has something of GFriend to their sound, which I also deeply appreciate.

The music video is more of a performance video, which is fine! I just had to adjust my expectations. The choreography is cute. The members are gorgeous. I love the outfits they're wearing.