Song Review:: Denise Kim (Secret Number): dance with me!

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  • Release date: 2025 July 23

  • Album tracklist: dance with me!

  • Album runtime: 2 minutes

 So in an interesting turn of events, I had someone on Threads ask me to review this. Which is interesting. As I just said. The curiosity gave me a really big dopamine hit, I'd just like everyone to know this, so I'm going to do it. I can't promise this will always be the case, but this also isn't the first time (the first one was a message on Tumblr for something that was definitely not kpop, and that one wasn't a full review because of a couple of reasons, but I was still honest about it as I am with all of these.) And even though I have been historically interested in keeping this more strongly Korean than just K-Pop adjacent, I'm not opposed to venturing away from there. So I have some investigating to do on this artist.

Be back in a tick.

It's gone from interesting to surprising and pleasing, not going to lie. This is flattering. So according to Genius, the artist is a former member of Secret Number, which is a group that I have actually done a review for, as part of my "I need to bolster the Aug 2023 reviews to make the NINE.i favoritism stand out a little less" thing. Denise Kim debuted as a soloist back in 2022, shortly after she left the group following her contract conclusion, so she was not a member of the group for the song I reviewed. She also has a song called "Dopamine", which, given the first paragraph, made me snort when I saw that. I don't particularly like the runtime on the dance with me!, which is literally nothing new as I'm sure y'all are aware.

I was trying to figure out why the instrumental sounded familiar before I started on the rest of this, but luckily it only took about three minutes before I placed it. I just rewatched a let's play for the FMV game Night Trap, and the instrumentals are remarkably similar in vibe to that, which puts the song in the 1990s, specifically 1994 if I remember what they said correctly. There's a silvery, sparkly quality to the instrumentals that remind me of a disco ball, without the song in anyway being disco-related, like a high school dance in a movie. It's also got some very early Taylor Swift vibes, if Taylor hadn't started out country. It's got some throwback to it, on top of sounding youthful and just generally pleasant. It doesn't have any bite to it though, and the energy remains completely consistent even though there are shifts in the instrumentals. The song could have benefited from a tempo or time signature change for a little bit, but the runtime naturally prohibits it, which is a shame because a softened slowdown could have been that moment where the MMC and the FMC are slow dancing and the music softens, and we get that final hope for the future/"I love you" scene, with soft smiles and gentle teasing, to continue with the high school dance motif. 

Vocally, I'm hearing a bit of a similarity to Rosé and APT, which is a pretty big compliment. I'm also getting some Dance the Night Away similarities, which is also a compliment from me because that was probably, if not my favorite, my second favorite song from the Barbie soundtrack. She's got good vocal control, and I'm particularly fond of the quick flip into falsetto for a single note she does a couple of times. Again, the problem is that the song doesn't allow for the time necessary to really develop. Instead, we get the bare bones of a song that is just too gaunt. The bones are strong. There's just no heft.

Okay. This is just a lyric video, so I don't have a ton to say about it. But I have to compliment myself on picking up what's being put down, because no, I didn't see this video until I went looking for a music video (I almost always use Spotify or YouTube Music on my phone while I'm writing them). But that also means a compliment to whoever the songwriters or composers for making this so very clear. 



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