It’s hard to believe that, after a year and a half since launching this website, I still haven’t had the opportunity to review any Korean comebacks by solo Bigbang members. For a group approaching military enlistment age, you’d think that YG would want to keep the members as busy as possible. So Good may have been created as part of an advertisement campaign rather than an album, but at this point I’ll happily take any music Taeyang wants to give us.

Thankfully, the song itself doesn’t feel like a car commercial, even though the accompanying music video stars the Lexus LC as much as it does Taeyang. Its instrumental pulls from the tropical house trend, but in a different way than most current k-pop is using these inspirations. Taeyang’s solo work tends to have a pretty strong r&b/soul vibe, and So Good‘s electronic elements add a new layer to his sound that works surprisingly well. I love how fleshed out the track feels, never pulling back on the instrumentation. The constant surge of hazy synths serves the song well.

But of course, any decent Taeyang track is all about that voice. There aren’t many male vocalists in k-pop with as distinctive a tone as his. A less commanding performance would run the risk of getting lost amidst everything else happening in the track, but Taeyang’s voice cuts through with complete clarity. Mirroring the instrumental, he kicks off the track at full force and rarely lets up. Usually, I’d prefer an approach that steadily built to a climax, but at two-and-a-half minutes, So Good is a very short song. Car or no car, it gets right to the point and keeps the listener hooked from beginning to end.