Song Review:: ODD YOUTH: can't go back- can't go back

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  • Release date: 2026 August 19
  • Album tracklist: can't go back, Happy
  • Album runtime: 5 minutes

 My girls! If you're new here, I absolutely adore this group and the day I stop yelling about them is the day I need a wellness check. If this is not new information for you, are you as excited as I am? Hot Chicken and Spooky are still my favorites from them and I'm always happy to add to my collection of songs I love from them. Which is most of them, if I'm being honest, which is why I hunted down a poster of the group.

I love how bright and energetic this song is, and it's positively brimming with second gen energy, which is delightful to be hearing. I can hear the Apink and the Girls' Generation and the Sistar and the Orange Caramel influence going on in this song, and it's got me toe-tapping to its summery brightness. It's got a couple of spots where it leans on the synth and the EDM of the elders, but there's also a little bit of the snare drum going on there, hearkening back to the KARAs and the After Schools of second gen, before we get a bit more of a rock section and another that's a softer bridge there at the end. We've got basically all the elements I want to be hearing in an instrumental and enough variation that I'm satisfied if not necessarily pleased, even if I think this song could have benefitted from a dance break, though it doesn't even have to be an EDM dance break as much as I'd love that.

The higher voices generally are not my favorite. I prefer the lower ones because they're more associated with darker colors in my head. The group does have one member that I think might be an alto, although I'm not positive on that end. We don't have a big showcase of vocals, which makes me a little sad, but I'm slightly more okay with it because the group was not shoved into the trap of breathy vocals. Even with as high and delicate as the vocals generally are, they're largely well-supported, which gives the places where they do go a little breathier a more deliberateness and a purpose beyond "aesthetic" (please the invisible sparkle emojis present in the idealized version of this post because I'm trying to be professional and emojis are not). But I cannot deny the energy here and I want to sing this, which is more important than anything else I've said in this paragraph.

I can't wait to see how they make this music video weird.

Interesting. This is the least weird one of the bunch so far. It's a summer vibes-and-visuals with lots of fun and only about a quarter of the amount of chaos they're usually causing. Which is still quite a lot; it's just down from where they're normally at.

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