Song Review:: V.O.S: I Can't Go to Shinchon

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  • Release date: 2025 December 26
  • Album tracklist: I Can't Go to Shinchon, I Can't Go to Shinchon (Inst.)
  • Album runtime: 8 minutes

 We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming of 2026 releases to do a review for a song released in December of 2025. Why am I suddenly doing this song four months later? Because I was just looking at the second gen groups because there have to be groups between TVXQ! and Super Junior. Enter: V.O.S with a 2004 debut. And then I was going to go look at their discography, and saw that they'd released a song in 2025. And for the record, with Spotify's recent slop of AI songs released under the older gen artists who aren't as active, I didn't look on Spotify. I was looking on Melon because I wanted the title track of the song for their second album and I saw the new release there. I think they actually put out two things last year, another Best Of album and a digital single. This one is the digital single. I know nothing about them, other than they had a member leave for five years and then rejoin the group when they switched companies, which, given certain groups I really like, has my full attention. And the runtime on this song? Swoon.

We've got piano! We've got guitar! We've got violin! We've got drums! Oh, I'm glad that I went and decided to wander down a rabbit hole of early K-Pop because this is such a gorgeous, cinematic instrumental that I don't quite know what to do with myself. This is what I want. There are so many shifts of energy and interruptions to where you think the song is going, and in a song this long that's a requirement to help reset the listener a little mentally and prevent them from zoning out too badly. We also get multiple of those spots but that's also a requirement because of the length. Just gorgeous.

Vocals time. It's a ballad, everyone, so I hope you'll give it a chance, even if it's not particularly your cup of tea. Their vibratos ripple through every single note, no matter how long it's held, and I couldn't be happier about this. We are in vibrato central here. I was just mentally lamenting that we didn't get harmonies like I like, and then we got some. The last half of the song is so rich vocally that I'm almost as in love as I was with Lee Chanwon. Beautiful.

This is apparently a cover or a remake or a very famous song. (Seventeen did it for karaoke like ten years ago). And there's no music video, but fine! Here! Have the song in general.

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