Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
This is a late review, but mainly because it caught my off guard that KISS OF LIFE released double title tracks. I wasn’t aware of that plan, but it’s a rather important detail since “Nobody Knows” is essentially a direct sequel to “Bad News”.
While the soundscape isn’t similar, the music video is a deeply-linked, as it gives us another viewpoint of the events in “Bad News”. Some people had brought up that the “Bad News” music video turned them off or didn’t make sense to them, which is understandable since a few scenes seemed just like the girls bullying people. Well, this provides context that shows why they acted the way they did, which is not only clarifying for their previous release, but also transforms it into a kind of commentary on people not knowing the whole story before forming an opinion on an issue. Certainly fitting for an idol, and also for the way things usually are now in the social media era.
As far as the song goes, KISS OF LIFE continue to carve out their own little place in K-pop, filling in voids in the musical landscape. It’s a throwback R&B track to something around like the 00s era, and since they have the vocals to make that work, the stripped-down and moody tones to “Nobody Knows” is surprisingly effective. There’s an assured and sassy bounce to both their delivery and the foundational instrumentals, and the sultry repetition of “yeah, nobody knows” as a refrain in the chorus works surprisingly well as a centerpiece. In an era of things being overproduced and overcomplicated, KISS OF LIFE perhaps at times leans too far in the other direction, but for a track like this, they thread the needle exactly right. And at this point, it’s hard not to look forward to where this quartet will go next.
