Song Review:: KATSEYE: Gnarly

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  • Release date: 2025 April 30
  • Album tracklist: Gnarly
  • Album runtime: 2 minutes

 This one is going to be quick y'all. Reminder that the group still has a minor. Also, congrats, HYBE. For once, the 2 and a quarter minute runtime works in the song's favor. Mature language warning. There is a clean version, but...

If I could get rid of the lyrics, I think I'd like the song. Abysmal runtime aside, it's got kind of a basketball game vibe in places, designed for energy and to pump you up, get you to move. Maybe even toss in a sassy hair flip or two. I was definitely responding well to the instrumentals, and then my brain would actually catch the lyrics and flinch. 

I wouldn't even know where to begin with this. I don't think any of them were even alive when the word gnarly was actually used in the vernacular regularly. I'm not sure how much I was alive for it and I remember the 90s. Putting that aside, the things that are being described as gnarly... aren't gnarly? Fried chicken isn't gnarly. And that's the least of the lyrics' sins. I'd love to say something about their voices and how they try to pull it off, but unfortunately, all knowledge of their voices has been completely erased from my memory, other than the beginning. And I suppose the best thing to say about the lyrics is that those are in fact words one could use. Perhaps not in this order, but they are truly words. Real words, even.

The music video is weird and bonkers and more than a little nonsensical and I kind of like it. I don't understand what's happening, but that's fine. Choreography is...not something that I like because again minor and no. But the comments had me raising my eyebrows.

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