Song Review:: Younite: Y- Taste

•  Release date: 2024 December 11

• Album tracklist: Perfume, TASTE, Episode

• Album runtime: 9 minutes

 Oh, look. Another of the Ace of Ace groups to release a single. I didn't know much about this group going in, but coming out, they're pretty cool. The leader is quietly intense, impressively so, and the group seems to have a great dynamic. I'd like for them to get more attention, so I'm going to gently offer their frankly magnificent cover of Bite Me as well as their cover of Armageddon from Ace of Ace. Now that the show is over, there's no harm in watching the performances, and some of the stages, from all the groups, are incredible. And! Happy 1000 Days to Younite!! That's a little under three years! Congrats to them! I think they released this single for that anniversary, and they also dropped a cover of EXO's First Snow. 

 A high energy dance track amongst the winter ballads released recently is pretty much what I want now, so I'm grateful for Younite and the other group that recently did that as well. Variety is the name of the game, and, as much as I love ballads and I've been very vocal about this, the more variety I've got, the happier I am. In this specific case, the normal trappings of this style of song aren't the most interesting part, nor, surprisingly, is the audience participation snapping. It's a very generic (again, not a bad thing because that simply means it adheres to the conventions of the genre) set of instrumentals that accomplish exactly the purpose it is set out to do. But there's also whistling, and that's interesting. I assume it's something in the same family as a flute in actuality, but it doesn't change the fact that this single, uncommon addition to what is normally very standard instrumentals gives it a surprising texture and lightens the entire song, making it more friendly and whimsical.

As much as I like their dancing skills, which is (fortunately or unfortunately) fully required in this musical climate, they also don't skimp on the vocals. For instance, Dey is primarily a rapper, and yet he opens this by singing. You can hear that auto-tune has been applied, but I don't know if it was a stylistic choice or a necessary one. In the case of the first, it's very genre appropriate anyway. In the case of the second, what artist doesn't use auto-tune, even a little, for the studio recording? Even my beloved BTOB has to have their notes adjusted a little in post-production. The song has a bright, cheerful sound with a sung chorus, and the whispering is relegated to the refrain, which is a good place for it and doesn't overpower the rest of the song. 

I'm actually kind of fascinated by this music video. I thought this was going to be a slice of life genre music video, and I love this. But the slice of life is actually the bookends of the frame narrative. I don't understand Korean well enough yet, so I have no idea what they're saying at the beginning, but I'm sure they're talking about what the group means to them, or what the fans mean to them, or what it means to them to have reached their 1000 day mark. Something along those lines, at least. The middle chunk of the video, the part with the actual music, it functions as more of a performance video than it does a music video and shows off a lot of the choreography, but a lot of the scenes interspersed with the choreography showcases are more slice of life-esque scenes. The combination there makes a lot of sense and works well together. Also, they're being cute flirting with the camera.