Honestly the song was pretty good! I absolutely HATED their last song and felt very…. Uncomfortable with Wonyoung doing the Marilyn act for most of that era because lol she’s so young???? Anyways this song however was very easy to listen to and felt much more professionally produced throughout from the start.
I feel like a lot of 4th gen groups have been trying this kind of experimental rap half and pseudo pop half that has even somewhat bled into older groups (Red Velvets last release and even arguably Psycho). I’m personally tired of it and have been mostly checked out of K-pop besides key musicians (IU, Taeyeon, Sunmi, RV, I’m a gay white twink you can probably finish the list) and so I didn’t even give this song a try until now because I honestly assumed it would be bad lmao.
Overall I would say, at the cost of sounding hypocritical, that it isn’t the most groundbreaking song, but the “woo” being used for transitions was nice, and I liked that it gave the listener an audio cue to listen for that wasn’t sort of off putting like the electric cowbell sound we normally hear or NingNing and Winter screaming that I don’t necessarily hate, I just think it’s a little jarring sometimes to be hit with a random
Genre either immediately or even worse so, just a loud random electronic sound.
My example for this will be a song I actually like, Run2U by StayC. At first I was very off-put by this beat because it transitions three times between the song, the pre-chorus and the chorus and the entire song is mostly funky so it’s okay because the pre-chorus isn’t used a lot so the beat change doesn’t happen as often, but they have the opening which I didn’t even count which is a random like… anxiety noise after “RUN” is screamed at you. And then there is the first beat of the song which has a cowbell tempo to warn you that a cowbell key change will indicate a full change in rhythm to the song, and then the pre-chorus comes in and is really slow???? It kind of sets up the bridge in the future of the song and also the final chorus with the “a little bit little bit” background vocal, but overall I feel a different change in rhythm and tempo would have fit the prechorus, and it would have helped keep an otherwise jumpy and staccato song a little more smooth and consistent, but maybe they wanted to break up the beat idk.
Point of this rant is 4th gen has kind of changed the meaning of pop and I guess I’m getting old! Love Dive is pretty good though! And the dance is really pretty, and I like the one girl who has the pig tail braids. She kind of looks styled as the token weirdo but I think this was a safer styling for that and I liked that she was given main vocal lines with that styling.
(:
