Song Review:: SAY MY NAME: SAY MY NAME- WaveWay {Debut}

• Release date: 2024 October 16

• Album tracklist: Be a Star, WaveWay, 8llowme, Goldilocks Water

• Album runtime: 12 minutes

 Straight up, it is not okay that this group is debuting with an actual child. The maknae turned fourteen (14) less than a month ago. Did she become a trainee at the same age G-Dragon did? And there's three years between her and the next one, and almost a decade between her and the leader. If she's this talented and skilled, imagine what she'd be after another four years of training! All of this to say, I don't care how much I may like the group from this song. I'm not listening to them recreationally until they're all adults. So this review will only use two listens to just the song, once for the instrumentals and once for the vocals. Then, at most twice for the music video segment. 

I'd love to say I'm impartial, but I'm obviously not. Fourteen-year-olds should not have jobs like this. But that's a discussion for another day.

I had a little bit of a difficult time finding the song, which part of me does feel bad for the older members for that. But those names are definitely noticeable, even though I look at them and go "That's interesting." Also, I'm not sure how to pronounce the third one. But just because I don't think it's okay to support debuting an actual child doesn't mean I'm not going to offer it up to you all so you can listen or not. First link goes to Spotify, and the second goes to Apple Music. I couldn't find YouTube Music. Sorry.

The sound at the beginning sounds a little like a notification chime, and it continues at least partway through the beginning after the singing starts. We also get a trill of science fiction warbling, which is cool. The higher pitched "Da da da da" reminds me a lot of a commercial jingle. At what I think is the start of the second verse, the instrumentals fall back, allowing the vocals to step in. The instrumentals also sound very bubble-like in places, which gives it a very fresh feel. And there's a cat meow.

I wish the maknae was older, because I might actually like the vocals they've got going on. They've got some variations with their tone, some higher and some lower. But a couple of them also have a really a really interesting texture to theirs. But I like the vocal layering that's going on. It's not strong, but I'm not getting the sense from any of them that they've got an alto in the bunch. Which is fine. They've got some who have something closer to a lower voice. There are also some vocal glitches occasionally, which are a feature, not a bug. 

This has a cat concept, and the range of how that's expressed is honestly impressive. We have animated cats. We have the POV of a cat. We have CGI cats. The members got cat ears added via animation. Also, and this is going to date me, but back with the early days of Vine and Instagram, the early days of short form video media, when things like stickers got introduced, the makers of said videos went absolutely hog wild for them in the way of a tween girl adding stickers to her notebooks. Although now, those girls are adults and adding stickers to their water bottles. There's a section of the music video that reminds me of those early videos with cute designs and stickers all over the place.