Song Review:: Junhee (A.C.E): The First Day & Night- Umbrella

• Release date: 2025 September 12

• Album tracklist: Umbrella (10:00), Tattoo (12:30) (with Lee Jiham, BK, Kang Yuchan & WoW), Too Bad (15:00), Sugar (18:00), You should come (21:00), Supernova (00:00), Night (02:00), 호랑이 장기 가는 날 (10:00)

• Album runtime: 25 minutes

 Congrats on the official debut, Junhee. Y'all. I have been waiting for this since his cover of Your Idol (see below) dropped. He's incredible. So excited. Gorgeous voice. I'm really looking forward to listening to the whole album. And also, I think it's really, really cute that one of his songs is actually secretly an A.C.E song. That's adorable. I love it when idols bring in other members of their group for their solo debuts. And even with having a song that is barely two minutes long, the average is still over three minutes. Do you know how happy that makes me?

Listened to the whole album. No skip, and Supernova being midnight makes sense. It's also all sad, and while I need to double check with a look at the lyrics, I think the entire album is at least predominately in English, if not entirely in English. Unexpected? Yes, but they as a group tend to release a lot of English versions of their tracks anyway, so not too much of a surprise. There's also a song that I do actually need to take a look at the lyrics to verify that I'm hearing what I'm hearing. (Spoiler: I was not and the word is "walk".) Also, my new Korean word for the day is apparently 장기, which translates to marriage, because it was the only word eluding me in knowing what that song title says and I also can't tell you how ecstatic I am over the fact that my Korean is going well. Obviously. Yay. Now, that being said, I understand the denotation of the title, but the connotation still eludes me. So that's something to look up, and for those of you who, like me, don't understand what is being referred to with "The Tiger's Wedding Day", it's when it's raining and sunny. A sunshower, if you will. Which will be something I look into the story behind because I love stories, especially ones that carry through the cultural psyche into common sayings, but for now, I have a reference. That's actually really clever, and I just realized that I'm spending a lot of time on this and haven't done any actual reviewing of the song. Apologies. 

This is one of those instrumentals that is pretty stable and consistent. The beginning has a slightly mistier sound, which matches the rain theme, but after the first chorus, the drumline really kicks in, and it's pretty consistently there for the rest of the song, but not overpoweringly so. It's something settled for Junhee's vocals to push and rest against. The quiet little bursts at "karma" and "drama" are a fun way of voice and instrumentals backing each other up to emphasize those parts and make them sound louder than they are. 

The thing is that I've got things I want to see in debut songs specifically. This doesn't feel like a debut song in that it's lacking a sense of showing off, which is a little frustrating, but at the same time, it's such a rainy day song conceptually and that permeates every element of the song to the point where anything else that I normally want to see wouldn't work. Like I said, frustrating, but it'll do. Also, his pseudo-rap? Yes. That's really nice and it adds a good texture to the song.

As sad of a song as this is, the music video is also pretty funny. Until it isn't. And then it's really sad. But it's cute and quirky with an easy to understand storyline and some nostalgic vibes, which I really enjoy. Also, two things. One, he's already got the Korean subtitles up, so once again, we see an artist who takes in feedback from the fans and then doesn't have to be reminded about that again, as a quality of life thing, which I adore. And two, there's a comment there that says something like "Who's here to support Junhee's solo album?" And Junhee commented "Me". He's such a dork and that's so cute.

And, as promised, the cover of Your Idol from K-Pop Demon Hunters, which he did while he was preparing for this. What a gift for Choice.