Song Review:: HITGS: Things I love : I- A-HA! {Pre-Release}

• Release date: 2025 October 06

• Album tracklist: HAPPY, A-HA!, PAGE, GROSS, CHARIZZMA

• Album runtime: 13 minutes

 Another girl group that I cannot listen to. When I saw them at KCon, I looked up the group because a couple of them looked about twelve and I was alarmed. There is exactly one member who is over eighteen right now, the maknae turned fifteen shortly before they debuted, but I'm going to be honest, they don't look that old. Again, I was very alarmed, and I recognize that they're going to look younger than most of the older teens I'm usually around because of the make-up and whatnot, but a couple of them looked closer in age to the ten-year-olds I'm around in terms of their physicality. So, needless to say, this is going on Underage Protocol, and I really hope no one is lying about age, because it has happened before in kpop. Also, even though they've released three singles before this, because I was so very behind, this is the first one I'm doing. PAGE is the only one that won't have a review by the end of the year (unless a music video drops), because if last year was any indication, I'm going to have large swathes of free time during award season and at the end of the year.

I think this song might benefit from the short run time in that it’s on Underage Protocol and thus I cannot just leave it on repeat like other songs. There’s not a lot of depth to the song, and by depth I mean low notes to the instrumental. It’s spread a little bit like water on a flat bit of concrete, but, crucially, it’s not particularly airy. It’s a fine line to tread, but I think the song manages to do it fairly well. It’s just too short and doesn’t have a chance to get any traction or strong variation. I haven’t looked at the length of the album as a whole yet, but I am a bit worried. 

One of the best uses of that short runtime is the fact that there are a couple of points where multiple members are layered over each other. It’s good use of real estate, metaphorically speaking, especially because they have more than three members. The only problem is that the points where the song does that, the instrumental gets a little bit more active, and because the song doesn’t have a lot of depth, that washes out the vocals an annoying amount. They’ve got decent vocals, but the song doesn’t do them any favors, and that’s a shame.

Well, it's instantly recognizable where this was filmed. Those are Joshua trees. I mean, that's also a pretty recognizable SoCal location. Although, to be fair, I don't normally associate SoCal with aliens. That's more of a Nevada/New Mexico thing that I have connected to aliens. But we have a storyline, and it's super weird, and both of those things are things I like.