Song Review:: Huh Yunjin (LE SSERAFIM): jellyfish

-

  • Release date: 2025 January 11
  • Album tracklist: jellyfish

  • Album runtime: 3 minutes

 I'm only vaguely familiar with the LE SSERAFIM members, having seen somewhere that they reminded someone else of MAMAMOO and GFRIEND in terms of chaos, and so I have in fact watched some content with them to enjoy the chaos. I also have memorized some random details about some of the members so that I can remember which group this is. In this case, Yunjin is actually one of the ones I memorized some details about. She's a former IZ*ONE member, operatically trained singer, and we share a certain snakey wizard house. That last one is the reason why I remember the other two details.

The song sounds a little bit like it's underwater with the instrumentals, which is fascinating and fits really well with the title of the song. I'm reminded a little bit of the underwater level in Mt Gagazet from Final Fantasy X, which is always a good sign when I'm reminded of my favorite video game. I'm also a little fascinated by the fact that I'm weirdly reminded of the soundtrack to Danganronpa, but I'm not nearly as familiar with that one and so I can't pinpoint exactly where the similarities are, if there are any. This song also kind of feels it's an aesthetic, more than anything else, which isn't a bad thing, just that I had to mentally recategorize it. It feels older than it sounds.

But y'all. Her voice. Wow. Her gorgeous vibrato is on display, which I deeply appreciate hearing, and her timbre is rich and full. The song itself is trying to be a beige background music sound, but her voice has so much lovely texture to it that it prevents the song from doing what it's trying. That, I appreciate. And looking at the credits, Yunjin helped write this, and it's got a pair of producers that clearly have been spending a lot of time with Source artists specifically because it's like looking at Bumzu and seeing a lot of Seventeen and NU'EST. Which gives me a fair amount of confidence that this song is something she wanted to do and the elevation her voice gives to the instrumentals makes it a feature and not a bug.

We got a lyric video with it, in a painted style. It actually reminds me of a short film I watched years and years and years ago as kind of like a painted flip book. It's very pretty.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The World of K-Pop in 2025

-
Image
 Come one, come all to the 2025 recap from your 15th favorite Fangirl! We had a lot of very fun and special moments throughout the year and some absolutely killer albums dropped. This is going to be a beast of a post, so please buckle up. I will attempt to be entertaining, but that means there may be puns and quips involved. I'm also going to scatter random stages from this year throughout the post, just to break things up, and so you can have some music, although I did include that big playlist that I was forming throughout the year. I also included the pet tax, because I talk about them often across all sorts of posts, so you can look forward to that.  Here's your first brain break! Make sure that you've got something to drink! Reading is thirsty work! I'm going to break this up into sections so you can Ctrl+F your way through to each section depending on your interests and how much time you have. And I'll give you a table of contents, because I love table of cont...
Read more

Greatest Hits:: VIXX: VOODOO DOLL

-
Image
 This comes from my submission form, and it's the first one I'm doing from there! Whoo! I was going to put this off a little because I just did a 2012 debut for a Battle of the B-Sides post, but oh, well! I have a feeling that this one isn't like that song either, so I'm less worried about doing too much of the same. Variety, yes, but I can do what I want and the few songs I've already heard of theirs ( Chained Up is in many of my playlists) I've liked already. How much of that is because I know they're in the 2012 debut club, which automatically enters them into my category of groups I look upon favorably, I don't know. But I do know that even without that, what I've heard is very good. I've also heard some interesting and hilarious things about the group, and am curious to know if they're true or not. But! This submission came with the note that the submitter was pretty sure this song was VIXX's first win and that was why it was being ...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: ONEWE: AuRoRa

-
Image
 Submission! Submission! Submission! Whoo! I thought this might be a good spot for this, so thank you for your patience! And when I'm finished with this, I'll head over to Threads and send it your way since you wonderfully left a username for me to deliver it to. I actually like ONEWE. And it's funny, after the administrative work and remodeling I did (some of it quite extensive) on almost all of these posts, I'm looking for something that hits my brain to do after this one (since I'd done some planning before I decided I temporarily hated myself). So I'm just listening to my playlists. And other people's playlists. And watching videos on YouTube looking for a sparked song. But I had another ONEWE song come up that caught my attention, and then I remembered that that would be after this one, so I couldn't. As of writing this paragraph, I'm still looking. But I just thought that was kind of funny. ONEWE is a five-member band currently under RBW that r...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: xikers: Rockstar

-
Image
 I've done a good batch of submissions. I've done my remodeling on the older posts. And now I'm ready for some energy. Not that the previous one didn't have energy, but this is full youthful energy rather than melancholic energy. This group also has the distinction of being my first baby group and my first K-Pop concert because I decided to go on a total whim and have an adventure for my birthday since they were performing near then. My cousin and I were concerned that we were going to get stuck in San Francisco but it was fine! Also, remember how at some point I said that the first five groups I got into were all March debuts (the first three K-Pop groups I saw were also all March debuts...I don't know why either)? These guys were number three behind NU'EST and BTOB, even though I saw NINE.i perform first (also a March debut for anyone keeping track). And because the end of the month (with their debut) is going to be taken up by a different group's annivers...
Read more

Greatest Hits:: TraxX: Oh! My Goddess

-
Image
 Yes, this is the name that the group turned into, but when the song was released, they were just going by "TRAX", which is how I'm going to refer to them throughout this post. The only reason I know that this band exists is because of the band 20th Century Boys, because one of them  started out as a member of TRAX. So this is going to be interesting because I haven't heard of any of their songs. Got this suggestion from someone sending me a message on Tumblr, which was a delight because the band is older than almost every new idol that has debuted in the last two years. Not all of them, but most of them, and it makes me happy to run into a fan of an older group and also for introducing me and a lot of other people to this band. I am very much looking forward to this. So TRAX is a band that debuted under SM back in 2004, and they've had a bit of a tumultuous history. This song is the title track of their second mini album after they went down to two. Released in 2...
Read more

Song Review:: Cravity: Dare to Crave:Epilogue- Lemonade Fever

-
Image
Release date: 2025 November 10 Album tracklist: Lemonade Fever;  OXYGEN; Everyday;  On My Way; SWISH;  SET NET GO?! ; Rendez-vous; PARANOIA; Straight Up To Heaven (Sung by Jungmo, Woobin, Seungmin); Stadium (Sung by Allen, Wonjin, Hyeongjun); Marionette (Sung by Serim, Minhee, Taeyoung); Underdog; Click, Flash, Pow; Love Me Again; Wish Upon A Star Album runtime: 45 minutes   Okay, Cravity. Let’s see what you have for us this time. The album is just shy of a three-minute average, and would actually have been achieved if this song had been three minutes long. Interestingly, I've done reviews for at least a couple of the songs on the album, so when I finish this up by putting in all of the above information that you’ve already seen because I have it first even if I write it last, I’ll have to compare album tracklists. We’ve also got some partial unit songs. I’m not going to call them official units, because I don’t know if they are or not, but it’s nice to see them spli...
Read more

Song Review:: NEWBEAT: LOUDER THAN EVER- Look So Good

-
Image
Release date: 2025 November 06 Album tracklist: Look So Good , LOUD, Natural, Unbelievable Album runtime: 11 minutes  I still need to do Cappuccino . Well. Okay. Speaking of rookie boy groups that I adore to pieces, NEWBEAT is coming to us with an album that would have done well being titled something in reference to how short all the songs are. Only one of the four is over three minutes, and that's barely, and of the remaining three, two of those are under two-and-a-half minutes. Yeah, I'm super happy about this. Still. Looking forward to this still because I like these guys, and I love how comfortable they are in front of a crowd already.  I love it when you can hear echoes of older groups in the younger ones. More on that with the vocals, but this is a very clean instrumental that is very much in the support chamber. The beat is strong and reliable, almost too heavy, but there are fun little melodies going on with the bass guitar to lighten the song a little, which is also ...
Read more

Battle of the B-Sides:: LE SSERAFIM- Impurities

-
Image
 Well, well. Considering what time of year this is (less than a week before Halloween), I was looking through my To Do playlist, looking for something a little spooky, and while this isn't my favorite song from the album, I did recognize the album artwork and took a listen out of curiosity. It was not a suggestion on The Form , which is fine, but it was a message on Tumblr. So, as soon as this is finished, I'll be forwarding that to you. I hope you enjoy it! Impurities  is the third track on their second mini album, released in October of 2022. So, hilariously, that's actually suitable for this as well. It's a really long list of people given writing credit, so I'll worry about them in a moment, but who is recognized as the producer is really interesting: 13. 13 is a producer team comprised of Score (who spent a lot of time at SM for Taemin and Jonghyun, but also for LE SSERAFIM in general), Megatone (also quite a bit of time with Score for SM, Block B, and also LE ...
Read more

Song Review:: NEXZ: Beat-Boxer- Beat-Boxer

-
Image
Release date: 2025 October 27 Album tracklist: Legacy, Beat-Boxer , I'm Him , Co-Star, Next To Me Album runtime: 14 minutes  Okay, time for the title track. I'm looking at the title runtime and just being a little disappointed in it, although there is a song that's over three minutes so after I write this, I'm going to be taking a look at that one in hope that one specifically is really good. Not that I'm not also hoping to really like Beat-Boxer, but it's the length, you know? This is a surprisingly sparce instrumental for a lot of the song. It's got moments where it gets a bit more energetic and full, but for the most part, it's at most a quiet beat behind the vocals, which is a lot of rapping. There are also some interesting science fiction warbles and what sounds faintly like alarm sirens. It's an interesting combination, I'm not going to lie, but at the same time, as much as this would probably make a great workout song (ignoring the title f...
Read more

Song Review:: ITZY: TUNNEL VISION- TUNNEL VISION

-
Image
Release date: 2025 November 10 Album tracklist: Focus, TUNNEL VISION , DYT, Flicker, Nocturne, 8-BT HEART Album runtime: 16 minutes   I don’t usually touch the remixes, but I figure that since one came out today, I’d take the opportunity to cover the original since I haven’t done that yet and I generally like ITZY. I worry about getting too invested in them because girl groups I like don’t seem to do too well. Disbandments. Hiatuses. It’s not good, and I don’t like it because I want to like more girl groups. Not that there aren’t hundreds of already disbanded ones I could get into, but I want some that I can actively support, you know? Funny thing about that run time, if you remove the first track, which only clocks in at around a minute-and-a-half, the average runtime goes up to three minutes. The instrumental is fairly uncomplicated, but very strongly afrobeats. I'm not sure if it's fully within the genre, but it's at minimum afrobeats-flavored. This is going to have som...
Read more