Song Review:: ifeye: sweet tang- r u okay?

• Release Date: 2025 July 16

• Album tracklist: loverboy, friend like me, round and round, ifeye (interlude), r u okay?, say moo!, echo

• Album runtime: 17 minutes

 Oh, ifeye. If they'd debuted a few weeks later, I could actually like this group like I want to. Okay, full disclosure, I did see this performed like at KCON LA 2025 before I wrote this, but I tried not to have my reviewing brain on. I will say I was impressed and am sulking because the maknae was fifteen at debut. But can we talk about the album runtime? I had to round up for that number, and it's awful. That's not even an average of two and a half minutes a song. Big, big sigh from me. Also, here's the review I did for their debut song, in case you're curious.

So, I'm personally loving the tonal shift I've been hearing away from the milquetoast, elevator BGM sound that a lot of K-Pop has been using a lot lately, especially the girl groups. They're fine on their own occasionally for the sake of variety in the landscape of sound, as well as variety within the individual groups so that the members can best show off all their charms. but when so many of the active and debuting girls groups have the same, mild sound, there's very little to differentiate from the rest of the trendy crowd. You know? Plus, there's not a lot to keep the song in the foreground of attention rather than the background. It's good to have milder, softer songs, but they do have to do a lot more work to hold attention and to make the song distinctly identifiable. Which is why I'm so down for this one. Plus, with how strong the beat is, as well as the rhythm of the different sections and how they work together internally, not only do I get my variation but not messiness that I want, but also it's a song that implies powerful dancing. That's the exciting part for me.

I'd be willing to bet that this song has some BLACKPINK influences, given the rather strong similaritie I'm hearing. If not BLACKPINK, then other comparable groups. Also, becaue I'm bad with timing, I've actually seen them do this live. They sound pretty similar to the studio version, which does raise the question of how much auto-tune and such they have applied, but they were singing live at least half the time. You can hear the difference, and they were both well-supported and pretty stable. Very few people can sing live perfectly every time, and with them so young (both in experience and age), it's one of those things where I'm definitely going to make sure they have the grace to learn and grow. But in a couple of years when I can listen to them recreationally? Oh, yeah. I'm excited to watch their progress. As a side note, is it Pretty Savage that bits of this song sound like? It's not one of the BLACKPINK songs I'm most familiar with, but I do love the iKON performance on Kingdom and parts of the vocals make me think of that performance. So, this is a lot of words to give it a thumbs up from me. And I'm miffed the maknae was so young. Or that the company couldn't have waited a month to debut them.

This is a weird little music video and I love it. Why are there sheep? I don't know. But I did snort aloud when I saw them. There's also a lot going on here, and I'm here for it. It's like a weird dreamscape, where things are familiar, but wrong, but you just kind of accept that things aren't right because eh, what are you going to do? The dancing in the back of the freight van was also delightful.