Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Taeyeon has returned with “Why“, which in some ways is sorta like “I“, except in the trop house genre.
Whether or not you like this track would seem to depend on whether or not you’ve liked this house kick SM Entertainment has been on or not. While there have been misses, and while I do think they don’t need to make every one of their artists have a house release, I’m thankful for tracks like SHINee‘s “View“ and Luna‘s “Free Somebody“ out of it. While I didn’t feel like “Why” was quite on that level, I’m definitely adding Taeyeon’s house effort to the list of SME’s successes.
The track had a difficult task in trying to make Taeyeon’s vocals fit into a trop house track, and while my only complaint was that there were times where it wasn’t as seamless as it could’ve been, for the most part everything was woven in effectively. Even though it wasn’t uptempo like I prefer, I felt the song carried momentum throughout while maintaining a delicate balance of peaks and valleys. Taeyeon’s vocals help immensely in keeping things dynamic rather than static, which is where a lot of house tracks can flop for me, but credit also has to be given to the structure of the instrumental itself. Rather than just sit back and rely on a basic house beat to carry the track, there’s a diversity to it that’s especially showcased near the end that helps differentiate the song from rest of the house releases, but also makes the chorus pop while resisting just relying on Taeyeon screaming.
Some people are less than pleased with “Why” because what they want out of a Taeyeon solo is just to jack off to her technical vocals or whatever useless shit like that. However, there’s plenty of that elsewhere, and I thought the reason this was ultimately successful was because it incorporated her powerful and emotive vocal style but subdued it a bit to fit in with a genre that typically doesn’t rely on a bunch of vocal theatrics.
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Gonna be honest here: I don’t give a shit about the plot. Maybe it’s an alternate universe, maybe DEAN died, or maybe it’s just reminiscing. Regardless, it’s not significant enough to interest me in the storyline. What did interest me, however, were the visuals.
It’s remarkable to me that SME went from box music videos to this, but they’ve been killing it recently with the outdoor shoots.
Taeyeon herself embraced the concept as well and made it work.
Hard to hate on the ‘Queen Of Beers’ anyway.
The music video served visuals, basically.
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In the end, it sorta reminded me of a trop house version of “I” in a lot of ways (or DJ Snake‘s “Middle“), and given that I enjoyed that track, it shouldn’t be surprising that I also found this inherently appealing. While it’s likely this will get way more praise than it deserves just because of who’s singing, it’s noteworthy for me that this kind of song and pace generally aren’t my thing, but Taeyeon has found the right mixture to make it work for me twice in a row now.
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‘Why’
“Why”
