Jessica makes her solo debut with quite safe but ultimately pleasant, “Fly”

Jessica has finally made her solo debut with “Fly“, and it proves to be a relatively successful start with promise for more as she finds her comfort zone.

If I had to describe “Fly” in one word, it would probably be ‘pleasant’. It was quite safe and somewhat basic, but the instrumental was light and fun, which matched her airy vocals well.

Fabolous did about what I expected him to do with the featuring. It was fine or alright but it did sound closer to Kanye West and JYJ featuring than Wiz Khalifa and Tao as far as being organic and natural. Maybe the lyrics about her being on her own will cause a mess of a fandom war, so there’s always that hope, but I was sorta disappointed he couldn’t be fucked to appear in the music video in some form.

For better or worse, “Fly” really does sound like a BoA mid-tempo, complete with the nasally tone at the higher range, but thankfully she never really seems to push it beyond her limits (as BoA tended to do). The song does build to have something of an uplifting or epic feel to it, and the breakdown with the piano was a nice touch to give the instrumental some variety at least.

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The music video was actually a highlight of this release for me, but before I say anything about that, can I just mention how hilarious I found it that Coridel Entertainment‘s intro title feels like I’m in a movie theater?

Anyway, the outdoor shots are beautiful, and while it does have choreography shots and closeups and things of that nature, it doesn’t linger on that for too long before going back to the focus on aesthetics.

Most importantly, thank god the choreography doesn’t even try that hard. Normally that would be a negative, but I do not want to see struggle dancing in a mid-tempo fluffy track cause that just takes me out of immersion.

Overall, they did a solid job of matching the music video concept with the feel and theme of the song, though the dancing honestly does feel extraneous.

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Despite the relative lack of adventure taken with this debut, “Fly” was a quality start to Jessica’s solo career and the crisp production helped elevate everything up a tick. The concept and music video meshing perfectly helped add to the humble success of the track, even though that too was nothing especially memorable.

So while I don’t think this was an amazing solo effort or anything to gush about, it certainly proved that she can indeed hold her own and that there’s potential for more down the road.