Song Review:: TWS: play hard- OVERDRIVE

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  • Release date: 2025 October 13

  • Album tracklist: Head Shoulders Knees Toes, OVERDRIVE, HOT BLUE SHOES, Caffeine Rush, overthinking, Here For You

  • Album runtime: 16 minutes

 If you've been around the blog before (if you haven't, welcome!), you'll know that I love TWS, as well as the other Pledis groups. I don't know what it is about Pledis, but for as disappointing as they often are as a company, one place where they are never disappointing is in their group formations. I say this having just found out that one of my favorite soloists actually passed the Pledis audition and went to YG instead. So obviously, I've been looking forward to this. And if you're someone with more stringent minor rules than I have, Kyungmin is eighteen as of last week and no longer has to leave at 10 PM. I'm sure he's excited about that. (Also, happy birthday to my cousin, as well as Jimin from BTS! Just found out they share a birthday!) Unfortunately, it seems that this album has been afflicted with the same affliction that TOMORROW X TOGETHER's albums have been the last little bit; namely, there isn't a single song that hits 3 minutes and at least one under two-and-a-half minutes. I'm specifically disappointed in the length of the title track, what with it being the second shortest song on this mini album.

There's something about this song, and I'm trying to figure out what it is. I'll think about it and see if I can figure it out. Anyway, this is a strong instrumental. The guitar in particular spends a lot of time being loud, proud, and in charge. It's almost more noticeable than the percussion, which is impressive because songs like this tend to have a very noticeable percussion line.  

TWS continues their trend of the conversational rapping in their title tracks, where it pops into the song to supplement their vocals, rather than pulling the focus. As always, I'm impressed with them, especially with the ad-libs and the layering that's going on. We've got a strongly celebratory, festival sounding song, which is fun. The problem, and I'm going to say this with nearly every release that is this short, is there is too much repetition and the song doesn't have the space to breathe. Combined with a lack of a significant punching moment to recenter and refuel the song, though we do surprisingly have a bridge which unfortunately does not fulfill the normal recentering role a bridge normally has, and we've got a song that kind of throws itself off a cliff without attempting to slow down. Despite this, the song just makes me smile. It feels happy and the relentless energy demands that you join it.

We get an extra minute of music video, which almost always means a storyline and continues to do so in this one, which delights me. And it's adorable. It's funny. Rom coms are, like, one of my least favorite genres, unless it's in a music video. Then, they've got me kicking my feet and giggling. They've graduated from high school and are moving to college and it's just constant chaos and unexpected problems. And I love this. The backwards skipping is my favorite, though. Adorable.

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