Song Review:: aespa: Dirty Work

• Release date: 2025 June 27

• Album tracklist: Dirty Work, Dirty Work (feat. Flo Milli), Dirty Work (English Version), Dirty Work (Instrumental)

• Album runtime: 12 minutes

 You know, I regularly forget when aespa debuted because they seem like such a visibly driving force that feel a lot older than they are. The temporary forgetfulness is held in check by the fact that I know they're younger than Red Velvet and I know when Red Velvet debuted. I'm also laughing a tiny bit over the fact that this is literally the bare minimum of a runtime that I like. It's kind of funny.

Ooh, I'm already pegging this song as an action dystopia movie OST vibing song within the first ten seconds or so. Something like a cross between Mad Max and Divergent, you know? There's a barely restrained feralness to the instrumental track. It growls and scrapes as the song moves with occasional sharp spurts of energy and power, which is especially effective because it gives the song a much needed energy boost.

Okay, I may be a little pre-emptive, but I'm calling this the Summer of Seduction. In my defense, there have been a lot of songs with this vocal style to come out this summer, even among the limited number of new releases I've heard so far, and it's kind of interesting. I'm curious to see how long I like this kind of song, because so far most of this year's batch have had to grow on me for a bit before I'm super happy about all of this. What I do appreciate about this one, like the others I ended up liking, is even though most of the song is relentlessly steady in rhythm and within a narrow band of notes, we do get sharp bursts of higher notes, which is deeply needed.

One thing I am enjoying about this is when the girl groups do this style, we often get fully saturated, powerful music videos and choreography to match, both of which I am a huge fan of. Give me music videos that don't just make me go "Oh, they're pretty." But I got it here, so we are good. And I was right with what kind of movie that this would belong to, if this music video is any indication. Are all of them like this? I haven't gotten into a lot of aespa's music.