Song Review:: Woosung (The Rose): 4444- 44 (Forget Forever)

• Release date: 2024 October 04

• Album tracklist: Paper Cuts (feat. New Vaticans), Before We Die, Day That I Died, 44 (Forget Forever), Never Let Go, Found You, Happy Alone (feat. B.I), Let There Be Light (feat. BOL4)

• Album runtime: 31 minutes

 Woosung is the lead singer and electric guitarist of the band, The Rose. They actually came to my city last year and if I had known, I would have gone to see them because that would have been a good show. It's fine. I'm not deeply annoyed by this at all. The band is amazing. But Woosung is pretty phenomenal on his own.

And look at that runtime! This is a proper album! In fact, more than one of the songs on this album are over five minutes long, including this song!

This is a soft edm ballad straight out of the 80s, and for some reason, I'm thinking 1986. So, I sent the song to my mother, who actually lived through the 80s to see if she could explain why I was thinking that very specific year. "It's sounds like something out of the beginning of the club scene. The beat of the music is faster than the song, which we heard a lot. And 1986 was also where we started hearing a lot of Debbie Gibson and that other one I can never remember her name."
"The one from Mega Python vs Gateroid?"
"Yes."
"Tiffany?"
"Yes! That's the one!"
The fact that I know those two from one of my favorite bad movies and not the fact that they're singers says a lot about me. But I'm glad to know I'm not completely far off. The instrumentals remind me of Journey, Phil Collins, and Bon Jovi, and it would not surprise me to hear this song in the next season of Stranger Things. It couldn't be, because it came out a couple of days ago and not forty years ago, but if I didn't know that, I'd believe it. It probably would be better suited to an earlier 80s year, in the transition period between disco and glam rock when the electronic music reigned supreme for a couple of years, but there's something very soft rock ballad about the sound as well. Soft rock ballad vocals over edm instrumentals.

His voice. The lyrics. I think I'm halfway in love. "If heaven and hell were to collide, would you choose darkness over light?" "Forever is just a word that everybody says when they get hurt." I just want to bask in the sound. I don't necessarily know that I like the way the instrumentals and the vocals fit together, because they seem a little incongruent, but the slower sections are prevalent enough that it doesn't bother me too much.

I'm really being spoiled with the healing songs in the last week. First Changsub with 33, and now 44? And they're both titled with numbers.

I very much appreciate the flashing lights warning. The music video is interesting. It's very "contemporary art" and modern dance, two things I admit I know very little about. It looks kind of cool. There's a sequence toward the beginning where the lights are synced up with the bursts of the music, which is pretty cool. But, in general, the meaning escapes me, despite how pretty it is. I am clearly not the target audience.