Song Review:: EPITHYMiA: UP- Turn Up {Japanese}

• Release date: 2025 March 15

• Album tracklist: Climb Up, Turn Up, Climb Up - Instrumental ver., Turn Up - Instrumental ver.

• Album runtime: 14 minutes

 Okay! This is going to sound a bit convoluted. They have an album coming out in December. That album will have all of their songs they've released since debut. This one came from their one-year-anniversary single released back in March,  and now has both an English version and this music video. I don't actually know which one was the title track. I'm assuming the other one because it has slightly more streams on Spotify? But I did really like the first song I reviewed for them (found here), and I'm bound and determined to shout about them from the rooftops. I think you may be confused as to why I'm suddenly reviewing, and championing if I'm being honest, a J-Pop group because I've been trying to keep this mostly Korean for my own sanity. That's fair. I also am a little baffled, and yet, here I am with this group. You can blame YouTube and the fact that they're so very, very active. They literally do lives about three times a day, they do a lot of K-Pop dance and singing covers on them, and one of them does speak Korean and English so he's in charge of reading comments that aren't in Japanese. Still. I likely won't shut up about the album in December, so prepare yourself for the person I will become.

I have to talk about how cute the ending of this song is with the instrumental. It's clearly a dance break of some sort, which is great because the song has the length to afford having one. But it's so cute. The melody and the instrument choice there softens the entire song and reminds me of a beach town in a video game series like Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy (if we wanted to be specific, a combination of the Besaid theme and the Chocobo theme from FFX). And then the dramatic "bam bam bam" at the end makes me smile as a way to end the song. The beat is very supportive without being overwhelming, and we've got the guitar that pops in occasionally to say hi.

I think it says something about how much I've been listening to Korean music because their accents while singing the English lines aren't the accent I'm used to hearing, and that's an adjustment for me. It's fine. That's a my-ears thing. The rapping is solid and I really like the rhythm because it starts a little slower, then speeds up, then kind of settles again, but it's a good flow and movement. We've got some falsetto work going on, which is nice, and there's a good brief hand-off between the vocals and the rapping in some parts, again, something I like to be hearing. I like it when songs have the members interlocked, although a vocal striation can be nice too. Considering some things, this is actually pretty solid.

And those things would be that as of the time of writing this, the music video has a grand total of...227 views. I think they may have to do just about everything by themselves, so I hope that if you're reading this, you'll watch the music video at least once. It would probably be really helpful for them. The English version has slightly more. This is very much a sentimental bit of video, a music video that is so fully in the slice of life or vibes and visuals category. Whoever decided on this particular beach for the filming location, well done. It's gorgeous. The water is so blue and the plants are a lovely, healthy green. The members look really good. And the more slice-of-life bits are absolutely adorable.