Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After being involved in a lot of releases as a soloist recently, Luna finally dropped her solo debut in “Free Somebody“, and boy was it worth the hype and anticipation.
What is up with SM Entertainment artists going solo and trying to be the new BoA?
Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.
Anyway, Luna promised an EDM pop track, and she delivered on that in spades with a retro-sounding (80s? UK?) house instrumental with pop elements. The instrumental is a great toe-tapper and keeps the energy up throughout the song, while Luna’s vocals simply take over from there. In particular, the pre-chorus and hook were executed particularly well, making those sections jump at the listener, and it helps “Free Somebody” standout from the rest of the comparables.
While a lot of tracks in this genre done by K-pop have generally sounded like they deserved to be looped in H&M or Forever 21 because they were so unadventurous and unchallenging (including f(x)‘s “4 Walls“), this worked perfectly because there was a definite and distinct build and peak pattern throughout the song. That’s made even better by the fact that even the verses have diversity, with vocal patterns and tone switches that help keep the listener’s attention and make things interesting when it could’ve just gone lazy and simple (and would’ve been great even if they did).
“Free Somebody” never feels like it loses momentum or gets repetitive, rather it carries interesting elements throughout the song and Luna turns in a perfectly-executed vocal. The combination of a lot of things like that going right at once while also flowing together seamlessly thanks to the arrangement makes the replayability on this off the charts.
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The music video, though, was quite a bit more hit-and-miss for me. The dance and choreography were adept, which was sorta surprising given that I was slightly confused that Luna was doing a dance track. While that was a nice surprise, that blurry filtered color look was back again and was as annoying as ever.
Yes, I see that.
Fortunately, the blatant sexual imagery (FREE SOMEBODY FROM WHAT, LUNA?!) was refreshing to see play out, as was the use of animation to do things they wouldn’t normally be able to show.
I dig it.
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In conclusion … “Free Somebody” is the shit and Luna needs to start working on new solo music as soon as possible. Simple, really.
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