Song Review:: Kiss of Life: Lucky (Korean Ver.)

• Release date: 2025 November 18

• Album tracklist: Lucky (Korean Ver.)

• Album runtime: 2 minutes

 Welp. Okay, another mini album I didn't get to during my apparent vacation this summer. This isn't from that though. This is just a single that they performed on the KGMAs. Actually, now that I think about the timeline, this song came out after that. The Korean version anyway. Huh. Well, good for them. Because of certain choices the group has made, I'm unfortunately having to put this on Underage Protocol. I need groups to stop doing this and being unapologetic about it. The runtime isn't where I'm happy either. Disappointment across the board. This one specifically is the Korean version of their Japanese title track (I may have to watch that music video as well, out of curiosity because I'm not going to cover it most likely).

So this is interestingly both very smooth and also pretty hip-hop. It's one of those things that has a lot of repetition, which isn't helped by how short this song is, but has tiny little additions that keep the instrumental from being too steady.  There's also a spot where the song goes a cappella, which is something I appreciate a lot, because it forces the vocals out into the open. It's a very smooth song and something that could probably put me to sleep if this was one that I could have put on repeat, which isn't a bad thing because it's not sleep out of bored. Just to clarify that.

It feels a little bit like this song was balanced a little weird. The instrumental is a little bit loud for the vocals, and while that wouldn't be a problem if the vocals were bigger, they're not, so the song is left with this weird, slightly awkward muted vocal line. Not that they don't sound good. I'm also not particularly partial to the high-pitched, cutesy tone. Even the rapping is a little high-pitched which is interesting given how soft the song is. I really like the a cappella section because it exposes and isolates the vocals well. But also, the song is basically too short to go anywhere and the last part of the song feels like wasted space. However, the lead-in to the last chorus? That surprise harmonizing? If the rest of the song had had that, the runtime could have been maximized, and it's just frustrating because you can hear what this song could have been.

This is essentially just a performance video, but it does show off the choreography well. I'm not sure what the main music video looks like for the original Japanese version as I didn't watch it and unless someone asks for me to take a look at the music video, I'm unlikely to just because there are so many other releases. But, the choreography looks good, the costuming is good, and the cinematography is good.