Song Review:: Hearts2Hearts: FOCUS- FOCUS

• Release date: 2025 October 20

• Album tracklist: FOCUS, Apple Pie, Pretty Please, Flutter, Blue Moon

• Album runtime: 15 minutes

 Up front, we're on Underage Protocol. Great. Now that that's out of the way, this is their first mini album released. Everything else has been singles since they debuted back in February (still disappointed in the date because that was an ignored opportunity; although fun fact, everyone, that was the day back in 1848 that King Louis-Phillipe abdicated the throne.) There is one review that I'm missing for them, but the time is coming when I'll have few releases so I can do some of the backlog. I really liked Pretty Please, so I'm tentatively crossing my fingers that I'll like FOCUS. I'm also really curious about Apple Pie, because that's an interesting title, but unless we get a music video for it, I can't listen to it until 2028. If you were already planning on listening to the whole album, or already have, please let me know if you think I'll like it or not so I can add it in preparation and I don't forget about it.

There's a certain MIDI keyboard quality to the instrumental. Airy, sparkly quality to it when it doesn't have the MIDI keyboard sound to it that is possibly the same couple of measures looped. The beat does a really good job of holding the song together and grounding it, but because there is so much repetition happening, it's a little bit too much. I really liked that first section where it lightened up, but the second one with the airy, sparkliness still had the MIDI keyboard with it, and the song didn't get a chance to actually breathe there. Granted, to be fair, at the time of writing this, I am a little tiny bit overstimulated as is, so it could just be that this is the wrong time to be listening to it, but I don't think so because of what's going on in the vocals.

Look, this group actually has pretty phenomenal vocals. Ignoring what two more years of training could have done for the maknae, there's a lot of solid strength to the vocals when they're actually singing. It's absolutely gorgeous. The sing-song muttering that takes up over half the song? Less so and feels like a lot of wasted space in a song that should have had the room to do a lot. I'm not going to say too much because the longer I think about it, the more irritated I get that those voices got used on something that neither shows off their voices nor does something interesting. It's a shame. 

Ooh, that's eleven million views on the music video already. Nice. That was a bit of a weird music video, and I love that. Do I love the music videos with a strong story to tell? Yes, especially when they match the lyrics and there's a story in the lyrics. But I also love weird, slightly hallucinogenic music videos (they appease the ten year old in me that started off with Charlie the Unicorn and Annoying Orange and those weird cat videos that were sparkly with all the neon that used the meowing to make a song). I can't decide if this was meant to look realistic or not. If it was, the CGI was distractingly, glaringly obvious in some places, and it weirded me out a little. If it wasn't, then it still weirded me out a little, but I can shove it to the side because while I may not like it, it does achieve that purpose. The choreography is very sharp, but that's as I'd expect from SM.