Song Review:: Cravity: Dare to Crave- SET NET GO?!

• Release date: 2025 June 23

• Album tracklist: 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: 35 minutes

 I don't know how similar Kingdom 2 will be to Kingdom, but I'm going to guess that this is their "We're going to release a song and promote it on Kingdom before we have to do the new one" song. Congrats once again on winning Ace of Ace! It's very exciting for the lot of them. Genuinely looking forward to that when it decides to get announced. I am also a teeny bit annoyed about the runtime. 

So I don't know about you, but I kind of love the specific flavor of songs that feel sporty, specifically basketball flavored songs. This one may have a sample in there with the wooden blocks, but I don't actually know the name of that song. If it isn't a sample, it's very similar and is probably designed to recall whatever song it is that shows up a ton in movies with a basketball scene in it. However, I do also have to give a shout out to the drums because I could easily see this being paired with a basketball practice in a movie, ideally in a music so we could get choreography with the balls and bouncing to the beat of those very prominent drums. You know what I mean? We've got a relentless amount of driving energy. This song in particular could have benefited from, if not an EDM dance break like I like, then at least a regular dedicated dance break. We've got some pseudo ones scattered throughout the song and while I do like them, they read less as dance breaks and more as delineated breaks between chorus and verse. But this is also a frustration partially stemming from the sub-three minute runtime.

We've got artistically applied auto-tune to the song, but not to all the members equally, which is something I'd like to ask the producers about. That will unfortunately never happen so I'll have to sit with the unanswered questions. We've got some harmonizations, which is a pleasant surprise, but not a lot of them, which is a shame. There's also a lot of call and response, and part of me (the cynical, suspicious part, I'll be honest) suspects that this was chosen as title track for a future Kingdom 2 performance. The problem with it vocally is that it's a very tame song. The majority of the song is breathy, which is fine for a b-side but for a title track and the amount of dancing they do? You'd want to make the song as easy on them to sing as you can for when they sing live (unless the choreography is more precision and less power, but judging by the instrumentals, I'd be surprised if it was). You've probably heard this sort of gripe from me before. I recognize that it's a stylistic choice, but I don't think it's best for K-Pop specific title tracks because of their choreography. 

The storyline is quiet, but it's there. We actually don't get a lot of the choreography, which is interesting, and I'll probably go look up a stage to get the choreography after I finish this. The aesthetic reminds me quite a bit of Super8 film, which is nice, and the vibes remind me of Maze Runner. That's a good combination.