Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
ENHYPEN have remade BTS‘s 2015 hit “I NEED U” for Spotify Singles, where artists basically remake their own or other artists’ tracks. While I wasn’t really looking forward to it when the news was announced, I found it to be an interesting take on the song, not just in terms of the remake’s quality in itself, but also what it reflected about current trends.
First and foremost, I think ENHYPEN did a good job with this, not settling for a retread cover but changing up the vibe of the song entirely. It’s much more vocal focused, and the reserved acoustic nature of it contrasts starkly with the more dramatic synth stuff.
More importantly though, they redid “I NEED U” within the scope of modern K-pop trends, and thus removed a lot of the tension, release, and emotion from it in favor of something vibey, simpler, and easier listening. It goes from track with a mood of somebody desperately banging on your door while wailing in the rain to somebody flirting with you in a smoky lounge, and of course it’s much shorter as well to put the cherry on top of the comparison.
None of this is good or bad in itself, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many newer K-pop fans preferred ENHYPEN’s version, but for me it kinda flattened out exactly what I loved so much about BTS’s original. And I feel like more often than not that’s probably happening in K-pop more frequently than it should, at least for my preferences.
