Song Review:: VIVIZ: VOYAGE: Shhh!

•  Release date: 2024 November 07

• Album tracklist: Shhh!, Cliché, Full Moon, Hypnotize, Love & Tears

• Album runtime: 15 minutes

 My girls had a comeback!!! Well, one of my girl groups. So stoked for this. 

This song has a richly grounded driving beat, and I like the sound of the repeating melody. But can we talk about the bridge? Those are some low notes that piano is throwing out there, and that's the only instrumental element in there for the first little bit. It's very striking, and is unlike the rest of the song, much like peacefully eating congee and then crunching into a piece of ginger hidden in the bowl. Even if that's the only piece in the bowl, it still flavors everything after it because that's what you can taste. The rest of the song is nice. I wouldn't necessarily want just the instrumentals as a solo track, but I do like them. And, enjoyably so, only one of the songs is under three minutes, and it's not the title track.

The key of this song might be lower than previous songs VIVIZ has released. I'm enjoying SinB's lower pitched voice at the start, especially since it matches her speaking voice a little better, and I'm always impressed by their vocal layering. But the specific trend of the overly repetitive chorus, especially when the chorus occurs as often as it does, means that a significant amount of the song is taken up by only a handful of words and notes. I understand the trend. It's easy to create a dance challenge out of a chorus like that, and isolated on its own, it wouldn't be an issue as that kind of chorus is incredibly catchy. But when there are a lot of songs like that get released over the space of a year or three, it creates somewhat of a monolithic soundscape, even if with the individual songs themselves use them and are super catchy. Which is the point. Also, if you're an English speaker, you'll be forgiven for thinking they're saying what you think they're saying, which they aren't, but it sounds like they are. Instead, they're using a clever play on words that is actually one of my favorite things to do. Bilingual puns. Gotta love them.

Oh, my goodness. All I'm doing is watching the choreography in the music video, and my core is tired. I imagine they'll be relieved once promotions are over because they might get a slight break from it for a little bit. Wow. I think it's genuinely hilarious that part of the music video was filmed in a public toilet. And SinB with her shorter hair reminds me a lot of Mago. I like that they tried out a little bit of the sexier concept simply because they got to try it out. But, seriously. That choreography is no joke.