Song Review:: Sunmi (Wonder Girls): HEART MAID- CYNICAL

• Release date: 2025 November 05

• Album tracklist: MAID, CYNICAL, Sweet nightmare, DDU DDU, Mini skirt, Tuberse, Bass(ad), BLUE!, Balloon in Love, Happy af, Walking at 2am, Bath, A long long night

• Album runtime: 34 minutes

 I’m a little surprised that this is only Sunmi’s first full album because Wonder Girls disbanded over a K-Pop contract ago (2017). I mean, this is her career and obviously she felt like this was the right time to release her first full album. It’s just a little curious, you know? But, whatever. We support a vocal queen in this house. The runtime is too short though. Not a super fan of this. It would be too short for a twelve song album. But for thirteen? And the title track is barely more than two-and-a-half. Although. To be fair. Two of those songs are a minute or under. On the other hand, only five of those songs are over three minutes, three of them barely. So. There's that. Still, I am intrigued by that four minute song she's got at the end, so I'm going to take a listen to that after this.

This song has a lot of good synthy beat and rhythm mixed together. It’s short on a melody in the instrumental, but this is also the seductive sort of song. So I’m currently in my yearly re-watch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which does mean that I’ve got that on the brain, but this is both something that would have played in the Bronze and feels kind of like Drusilla’s theme song. A little unhinged, a little synth and velvet, completely unrelenting. It also feels a little French, like a French nightclub in a movie? (side note, French perfume/cologne commercials and ads are wonderfully unhinged and chaotic and they’re a special love of mine; thanks French 4 class in high school for introducing them to me and making me write paragraphs on them).

Vocally, this also feels a little French. I have to keep reminding myself that she’s not speaking French when she isn’t speaking English. I’m not overly fond of the chorus because of how one-note it is, but the verses are lovely. Love them. But, with how active and clear the vocals are in that first verse, there's a really good contrast with the chorus and it's just very satisfying.

I kind of love that she gives us music videos that are definitely on the odd spectrum. I also love that she gave us a horror movie compilation adaptation for the music video.