Song Review:: WayV (NCT): FREQUENCY- HIGH FIVE {Pre-Release}

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  • Release date: 2024 November 25
  • Album tracklist: FREQUENCY - Korean Version, HIGH FIVE, TWIST, Filthy Rich, Call Me, Frequency
  • Album runtime: 17 minutes

 Because the city I live in doesn't have K-Pop come to it very often (read: almost never, I think we've had three total groups and that's only been in the last year or so), any time a concert is shown in theaters, I definitely go to it, even if the group isn't one I necessarily see. Did I see the NCT mega-concert in theaters? Yes. Could I name all the subunits? I think I could have at that point, but I always worry that I'm forgetting one, still. How many members did I know their names? I knew Mark, Johnny, Yuta, and Ten. That's it. That number has gone up some, but I'd describe myself as "vaguely familiar". Still, I have a member in WayV that I know and can identify on sight, and that's good enough for right now until I decide to start looking into them more. But WayV is also one of two subunits that I have the most songs of theirs saved into my regular listening playlists, so I'm a little annoyed that both of them have comebacks within weeks of each other.

I could easily see this song being used in a fan edit for a TV show or movie. It also reminds me a little bit of the 90s, specifically skaters in the 90s. The sound is enjoyable in a way that I wasn't expecting, but it did take a few listens to get to that point. I think what won me over was the record scratching sound effects in the instrumentals. It's a fun little quirk, as is the punctuating synth during the chorus, that elevates them into something more than the standard hip-hop instrumentals we get throughout a lot of the song. But the song also features plinked piano and audience participation snapping, two things I really like.

"Excuse me, sorry, not sorry" makes me laugh literally every time I hear it. That line is said with so much sass that I just want to engrave it onto my brain. I love that line so much. It's definitely going to live there rent free for the next little bit. Also, I'm hearing the word "fight" instead of "five" most of the time, which I'm pretty sure makes this a very different song. Or maybe it doesn't. I haven't looked at the lyrics yet, and my mental subtitles aren't working well right now. I'm also a huge fan of whoever does the very last vocal run. Wow, his voice is good. 

I love the music video. I'm six seconds in, and it's legitimately one of my favorite ones I've seen this year. For clarification, my favorite movie is Jurassic Park, and it has been since I was about three. I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was little until I realized when I was about seven or eight that I wouldn't actually get to play with real dinosaurs. I've never lost that desire, and the music video for HIGH FIVE taps into that with the force of a T-Rex slamming into a Jeep. The members are obviously more Indiana Jones than Dr. Grant, but that's okay too because when I was a teenager, I convinced my mother to name her new puppy Indiana, after the dog (this is a reference to Last Crusade). I genuinely love this music video with the weird magic artifact and the dancing in the get-covered-in-dirt clothes. I wish it was a full movie. I'd even take a book.



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