DIA surrenders to grating trends with forgettable sound on “Good Night”

In these days of the waning tropical trend, artists really have to do something daring with the genre’s template to stand out. A simple fill-in-the-blank “trop bop” just won’t do. And with the repackaged single “Good Night“, DIA have fully surrendered to the most grating aspects of this fad. For a group constantly struggling to find their identity, going this generic is probably the worst thing they could do. I really want to enjoy DIA’s music, and August’s “Can’t Stop” was a step in the right direction, but every time they show promise it’s undercut by a track like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY5LBlkCI6k

“Good Night” isn’t offensively bad. It’s just incredibly dull and played out. As with so many songs this year, those incessant tropical synth squiggles are omnipresent. I just want to reprogram every device in Korea capable of creating this overused instrumental accent. It should have been banned from K-pop months ago, but it keeps rearing its head even as we transition to fall and winter. To make matters worse, the girls give a halfhearted performance perched somewhere between “sleepy” and “baby talk.” It’s a bafflingly low-energy choice, which leaves “Good Night” without the punch of a dance track or the weight of a good ballad. I’m not sure what the song is trying to be, beyond a three-minute soundtrack for the girls to look cute.

The thing is, DIA can be more than this. It’s hard to believe that anyone — including the girls themselves — felt remotely excited about promoting such a forgettable track. For a group who has sent several members to KBS’s upcoming ‘The Unit‘ series in search of a reinvention, the time is right to stop pussyfooting around and go for broke. Trendy songs like “Good Night” may keep them around in the short term, but they won’t help fuel a meaningful, lasting career.

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