Song Review:: Lee Seung-gi: With- Return

• Release date: 2024 December 04

• Album tracklist: Return (with LYn), Because You're My Woman (with Cha Eunwoo), Delete (with ISU) Difficult Words to Tell You (with Captain Planet), Unfinished Story (with Lee Mujin)

• Album runtime: 21 minutes

 I'm going to come right out and say it, and this will be the only time I say it. I do not approve of how he's been treating the trainees on Starlight Boys. I don't care if the producers told him to be like that, or if that's just him, but it's not okay. I have feelings about that, but that's as far as I'm going to go. Personal feelings aside, he does actually have a lovely voice, and as a ballad singer, he gets to stand there and use that voice without having to worry about anything disrupting the sound. I'm very curious about the song he did with Eunwoo, though, and I can't look at who the duet partner for Difficult Words to Tell You for too long before I have a cartoon in my head and I start to giggle. Congrats on the twenty years in the industry!

So, our ballad singer is back with exactly his wheelhouse, which isn't something I'm going to complain about, but, this isn't just a ballad. This is a soft rock ballad. The electric guitar goes to great and effective use to bolster and support the vocals, driving the energy up where the piano and the other strings spend most of the time gently supporting. The biggest blasts of guitar energy are also accompanied by a drumset, but the percussion doesn't add as much as the guitar does. It's still a very well-rounded instrumental track that would be stellar, even on its own because of how subtly some of those elements are woven together.

Whatever else you can say about him, he does have a really good voice, and this genre very well suits him. He's got incredible control over the dynamics, and you can actively hear where he switches the vibrato in his voice on. That one is a little weird for me that you can hear that in the final version of the song, because it feels like the kind of thing that would normally be cut. It's cool being able to actively hear it happen, but it feels like an interesting choice production-wise. I assume there's a reason for that. LYn's voice is also a great compliment to his. I almost feel like she uses her vibrato more, which obviously I'm going to enjoy. 

Ah, this is a storyline. It's so much a storyline that I caught my brain shifting into movie analysis mode and focusing on lighting, color, and camera movements. The camera movements during the first act especially I really appreciated to give the illusion that they were right in front of each other, and the way the lighting was shifting as though they themselves were moving rather than the camera. Plus, the way that the light and shadows are used to establish the mood of sorrow and focus is very clever. The second act shifts the color tone to cool, which is usually used to indicate the time period as in the past, but given the scene, it's also used to indicate sad. Presumably, the fact that the present is more warmly toned means that distance has taken some of the edge off the pain, even if it isn't completely sanded down. I also noticed that her costume matches the concrete walls and his brown coat was the only bit of color in the room. I love the pot boiling over as representation of emotions after we just saw all the good times. I would hate watching this if it was a drama or a movie, even though the analysis would still come into play, but the music video form of this storyline is short enough that the syuzhet being in such a non-linear narrative isn't bothering me nearly as much as it would in longer-form. This is not a happy music video. It's incredibly well-crafted, but equally sad.