Song Review:: ITZY: GOLD- Gold

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  • Release date: 2024 October 15
  • Album tracklist: GOLD, Imaginary Friend, Bad Girls R Us, Supernatural, Five, Vay (Feat. Changbin of Stray Kids), Born to Be (Final Ver.), Untouchable (Final Ver.), Mr. Vampire (Final Ver.), Dynamite (Final Ver.), Escalator (Final Ver.)
  • Album runtime: 34 minutes

 Okay! ITZY. I get them and TWICE mixed up a lot. TWICE is the older group, and ITZY is the younger group, yes? Still, right now, I'm glad this is a JYP group so I can focus on that company for a minute instead of another one that I'm a little angry at right now. So! ITZY! Let's get to it! And look at that! Hey, there, Changbin! Glad to see you again! Also, can someone help me out with what "final version" is supposed to mean? They take up half the tracklist, but I'm not sure what they're supposed to be.

Oh, I like this introduction. I like it very, very much. We've got power chords! Their voices are glitching! And then the abrupt switch to what I can only describe as "creepy doll aesthetics"? And then it doesn't even stay there! That's three genre switches in the first thirty seconds of the song. That's almost 20% of the song. The instrumentals are also surprisingly sparse, but I like it. It gives the members a lot of acapella, or pseudo acapella. There's an occasional ting that's the exact start note, and possibly the same instrument as well, as in Monster by Seventeen. But GOLD never quite fully leaves the creepy, or at least it takes some detours back to creepy with the instrumentals. There's a sequence of the instrumentals that reminds me a lot of the theme to Halloween, which coincidentally happens to be my favorite horror movie. The rhythm is wrong, but the notes might be down an octave from that. Also the random discordant clashes. I wasn't expecting these vibes, to be honest, but I'm so very much here for them. Give me the spooky! Especially this month!

I'm reminded a little bit of second gen girl groups, specifically 2NE1, with their vocals. Those are some belts that wouldn't be out of place in a rock band, but you have the higher, "cuter" shouting that annoys me still, but because I haven't heard it for a while, I'm a little more tolerant of it. It's the ode to girl group cute, but the rest of the time, the members are down in a lower register. There's also a lot of rapping, and I may have to spend some time thinking about why I like the amount of rapping this song has, despite the reduced amount of of vocals, where normally I'm not a fan. This song is going to end up stuck in my head, which I'm okay with, but I wouldn't know I'd love it if it hadn't been for this little blog of mine. 

I think I simply love this music video. There's headbanging, explosions, time shenanigans. Houses are getting destroyed. This is a romping good time, and I am here for it. Also the all black costumes at the end? They look so good! And I recognize that the pickaxe is completely on trend with, you know, the whole mining and gold motifs going on here. But when was the last time we saw a pickaxe in a music video? The ferocity has entered my soul.



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