Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
RM of BTS recently dropped what’s being called a “playlist”, and one of the songs off that “playlist” recently got a lyric video in “Seoul“. The whole effort was a bit surprising to me, but the appeal of this song in particular took me by surprise.
As some are aware, I’m a fan of RM’s previous solo output, yet the type of sound he’s going with on this “playlist” is not typically what I enjoy at all, so something had to give. Well, count it as a win for RM and “Seoul”, as I enjoyed this about as much as I can like something out borne out of this genre.
To give you an idea of how much this type of release normally does not catch my attention, initially I was going to throw this in Deep Reviews and say it had a nice atmosphere. Then I was going to give it an article but was going to stop short of a review, saying that it’s sneaky catchy and could continue to grow on me. By the time I was done writing that article, it had grown on me to the point where it would be pointless not to just review it properly. Yeesh.
Anyway, it’s noteworthy that despite the ethereal vibe of “Seoul”, it manages to never bog down into boring territory, which is my usual issue with many of the songs like this. The underlying beat while RM is rapping generally keeps pushing things forward, which does enough to get it to the infectious chorus. While it didn’t latch onto me immediately like a pop hook, over a bunch of listens I kept coming back to it, and eventually I couldn’t wait to hear it every time I started it up. It has an alluring property about it that makes it memorable with its “if love and hate are the same words/I love you Seoul/if love and hate are the same words/I hate you Seoul” refrain that hits all the right notes.
Thus, “Seoul” appeals to me plenty right now, but I have this feeling that it’ll also have a long shelf life. Basically, I feel like this would go along perfectly with relaxing drives home at night through the city lights. It’s not quite Code Kunst‘s “Fire Water“, but it has that same appeal. The atmospheric, vibing type of tracks don’t click for me often, but RM made it work on “Seoul”.
