Song Review:: Secret Number: Bitter Sweet

• Release date: 2025 December 22

• Album tracklist: Bitter Sweet

• Album runtime: 3 minutes

 This one was not on my schedule of releases, but it's here and I'm very curious about it. But they have now released two songs this year, so that's better than it has been and a little bit of a relief, not enough of one for me to consider them safe but they're releasing music again.

You know, this song has a little bit of a traditional vibe to it, especially during the dance break, but that lingers through most of the song. It's all down to instrument choice. I'm not hearing the normal trip of drums/piano/guitar, but what I am hearing are instruments that I swear I've heard in historical dramas, which is my only frame of reference for many of them because unfortunately, my English literature background doesn't give me a lot of historical range, and annoyingly, Asian history for most of my history classes was largely glossed over (except for a few very specific time periods and events) so I can't even match instrument to a specific time period, which is annoying and obviously a shortcoming I have. That being said, this isn't a fully traditional piece, because we have synth and the segmenting that sounds a lot more modern, so this a fascinating blend that I could very much see myself listening to a lot.

At no point in the song is that blend more obvious than with the rapping. Those are the most "modern" sections of the song, which is understandable, but they fit together so well that I'm kind of impressed. I'm also amused by how many times "수 없어" shows up more often than "수 있어", though that's a general thing across songs and not necessarily specific to this one, although this is the one where I realized that I hear one more than the other. It's also incredibly satisfying that they say "bitter, bitter, bitter" followed by "sweet, sweet, sweet" because then each bitter gets to match with a sweet and it's symmetrical that way for most of the song. I'm loving this song, and they sound so good.

It's a vibes and visuals music video here, which is fine. We get a lot less choreography than I would have thought we'd have gotten, but I'm actually delighted by the use of grayscale. It's a fun little cinematography and editing choice that I've now gotten two songs with it in a few days.