Song Review:: AMPERS&ONE:: WILD & FREE- Kick Start

• Release date: 2025 April 08

• Album tracklist: Kick Start, My Mistake, Who Are you, I Know You, Knock Knock, WYD

• Album runtime: 17 minutes

 Do I listen to this group a lot? No. Am I still somewhat fond of the group? Yes. They were on Boys Planet and it's been delightful seeing the former trainees debut and grow as artists. Also, I love their names. They make me smile. I did take a brief look at the maknae's age just to double check, and he turned eighteen last year, so it's all good. For the runtime, the title track is barely over three minutes, but it is over three minutes, so that's fine. And all the songs are hovering near the three minute mark if they're shorter than that, but there are enough that are under that, combined with the ones that are over being barely over, result in a runtime that I refuse to round up to eighteen minutes because it feels disingenuous even though technically it would.

I'm struggling a little with this song. It's a solid song. It does exactly what the genre expects it to do. But because of that, there's very little personality or flair distinct to this group to the song, barring the car starting noises that happen at about :13 and 2:58 which could have been so cool to focus the song around, especially since they occur at the beginning and the end of the song respectively. I hesitate to use the word "mild" to describe a song with this much energy, but it definitely needs some salt and minimum, preferably with some ginger or cinnamon as well. Perfectly palatable? Yes. Something with complex and nuanced flavors that make me want to slow down and savor it to catch each flavor note? Not exactly. I will say though that there are a couple of sections that the production team did a really good job of using a stereo system.

Through absolutely no fault of the group because I think they've got some pretty solid talent if what I remember of the Boys Planet contestants is correct, this song again feels rather generically fifth gen. As I noted in my review of He + She = We, they've got the potential for good voices, but the company isn't giving them songs that aren't something that if you looked up fifth gen K-Pop in the dictionary, you'd find this group's sound. That can be taken a couple of ways. Either that means that they don't have a strong aural identity yet and their music is so good, but average, that what they sing could be done by any number of other fifth gen groups, or that means that they express the fifth gen sound so well and clearly that that is their identity. Which one? I'll let you decide, and really it doesn't matter which side of that division you land on. I'd like for FNC to figure out what AMPERS&ONE's whole deal is faster than they figured out SF9, but they're still less than a year and a half old. They've got some time to figure that out. But, even though the song doesn't have anything big and impressive vocally, it's still nice. I might toss this into a playlist, and I will be looking at the other songs on the album to see if they've got some that hit my brain just right. I'm willing to be patient because the potential is here.

So, hilariously, there is a fairly recently debuted girl group that has kind of a cat concept. And that's very much what this music video is. I also really, really kind of love how weird music videos have gotten these days. There were a couple of points throughout the music video where I found myself tipping my head to the side going "That's a choice." But I also love it when songs and music videos do that because even if it falls flat, which I don't think this one does, at least they're trying something. And really, how weird this music video is especially works in the favor of the song, because it gives it the flavor and texture that the song on its own is missing.