Song Review::Vahn (NINE.i) (feat. Taeb2): I swear

• Release date: 2024 October 09

• Album tracklist: I swear

• Album runtime: 3 minutes

 I'm never going to stop talking about Vahn and NINE.i, and the fact that he's been putting out so much music in the last little bit tells me a lot. Whatever happened with their company, he's free to do music like he wants to now apparently. And he's been doing all sorts of collaborations, first on his debut solo album and now with this digital single.

He went for a full rock sound this time around, something that matches his voice very well. But this paragraph isn't for his voice; it's for the instrumentals. And the coolest thing is they actually get more complicated during the chorus. Instead of just an added wall of sound, you get a harmony to the vocals with the electric guitar. And the song ends with just the guitar, which is an interesting choice. We start with the guitar and drums, which is actually the chorus section so that's cool, but end with only the guitar. And it's a very clear ending. After the frenetic energy of the chorus, that full stop is a deep breath.

In another life, I think this song was a soft rock ballad. Rather than letting his voice be clear, he's got this lovely husk to it that matches the instrumentals very well. And unlike his last title track, he opted for a blend of Korean and English lyrics, as is typical with K-Pop. I wish he used vibrato with those held notes during the chorus, because it seems to me that companies tend to train the vibrato out of their idols' voices because the style of music they typically do doesn't require it, rather than give them moments to show off the vibrato. How many times can I use that word in a single sentence? But the point still stands. If you're going to flex vocals with powerful, held notes, actually flex the vocals and let them loose. 

If you get motion sick, please be advised that the lyric video may trigger it. It even disoriented me, and I don't know the meaning of the word. But the amount of love Vahn has for making music is just brimming through the entire thing. There are about five different styles to the music video, all accompanied by a handheld camera, but the name of the game here is "freedom". What I'd actually like to do is do a full analysis on the cinematography of the video because there is some interesting stuff going on. There are some sections where it's almost in the style of live-action stop motion, versus the dip into animation. I'm fascinated by the camera angles as well. And as much as I'm amused and a little confused by the ending section starting at about 1:50, I think if we see it as a metaphor for beating odds and winning, it is less confusing. Also, he turned into a gameboi, and that's kind of adorable.