Greatest Hits:: Yoo Jae Suk (feat. EXO): Dancing King

 This one is a little bit different. It does come from The Form, so that's exciting, but, well, this song isn't my normal fare for a GH song. For one, Yoo Jae Suk isn't a K-Pop artist, he's a comedian as far as I know. EXO, yes. They're definitely K-Pop, but this is new territory. Still! That's okay! The more variety, the better! I just don't know how long this one is going to be, and I feel bad for that right now, but I'm not going to extend it any further than it needs to be.

Interestingly, looking up the background to this song suddenly makes GoSe and LOVE Story make more sense. I love learning about the original references to things. This is why I like context and why you all get to suffer through my ramblings of context, because I enjoy being able to contextualize things. I very much am not a follower of the "art can exist as is and independent of reader influence and author intent" schools of literary criticism. 

Okay, so this song came about because of Infinite Challenge, and was included as a song for SM Station. And normally I would have this whole spiel about this point where I talk about him as an artist, but that's also not his day job? So I'm only going to include the relevant to this song parts. But also, apparently this song peaked at number two on at least one chart. I also decided to do this one rather than one of the others from The Form to celebrate Kai getting discharged!! Congrats to him!! Just one member left.

• Artist: Yoo Jae Suk (feat. EXO)
• Album: SM Station Season 1
• Song: Dancing King
• Release Date: 2016 September 17

So, I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't this. Like, this is genuinely a good song. I honestly probably should have expected it by the comments left on The Form, because the submission included how much of a fun song it is to just dance to, but it also felt kind of like one of those songs that artists just do because they want to do them, rather than because they're any good. On the other hand, sometimes those songs are absolute bangers and this is one of those instances.

Instrumentally, this is like a jazzy Latin dance number, and I'm fully into this. It's a lot, but at no point is it ever overwhelming. The balance here is incredible, long enough that it feels like a fully fleshed out song, but not so long that you find yourself getting bored with it. It's got plentiful little twisted sections which alleviate the potential trouble spots. 

Now, I don't know EXO all that well, so I can't really pick out any specific voices from the group to be able to separate out Yoo Jae Suk's voice. My apologies to the EXO-Ls out there for that. I haven't watched enough with them to have them memorized, but I do think I can at least name most of the members. I also don't know Yoo Jae Suk's speaking voice well enough to be able to take a guess as to his singing voice. I don't know. It does say something about the quality of his voice that I can't immediately pick out the comedian's voice in a group of professional singers.

But it's also just genuinely good. And the submitter was correct. The song does demand that you dance along with it, or at least do happy wiggles with it. It's just fun. I'm delighted by this, actually. I didn't know it existed. I'm sure there are others who didn't as well, and I hope you're enjoying this thing half as much as I am. 

And the music video? How adorable is that? We get little cuts from the recording, from the dance practices, and then from the concert(s). There's bits of animation, like we get on shows like Knowing Bros and I'm sure also Infinite Challenge even though I don't know that I've ever actively sat down to watch any of it, but the added animations feel like the bread and butter of South Korean variety shows. But the whole thing is just cute and the chorus choreography looks so good, with the shoulder bobbing and the dorky dancing to the side. EXO looks good and he has put in the practice to look good alongside them. 

That's about half the length of the regular song, but that's okay, because we get to see the choreography. And, again, it's precious and it does just makes you want to dance with it.