Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After the quality aespa delivered in English with “Hold On Tight”, expectations were ramped up a bit for the release of “Better Things“, though the result here was a bit more mixed and surprisingly unremarkable.
It’s almost odd that this is so low energy for the most part. I had heard snippets before of it live that sounded promising, as it was upbeat and had a tropical kind of summer feel to it, so I thought the recorded version might solve the pep issue a bit. Instead, it’s something like a less catchy and even more understated version of “Alcohol-Free“, for a track I already felt was too relaxed. It’s basically just a vibe for the majority of it, and the melody and repetitive refrain of the chorus weren’t nearly effective enough to make that work.
“Better Things” finally does deviate during the bridge, but that actually sort of hurts the song because it throws putting this on as a relaxing, vibey background track out the window. There’s also some vocal peaks in the conclusion that I wish were present throughout, but by then it was far too little and too late to salvage much.
