Song Review: ONEUS – Twilight | The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion

As spring heads into summer, we’re beginning to hear follow-up title tracks from 2019’s January debuts. An artist’s second single is almost as important as their first. While you only get one chance to make a first impression, the K-pop market is fickle and fast-moving. Debut years are all about multiple comebacks and signature sounds. Both can help garner a loyal fan base.

With this in mind, there’s a nice continuity between ONEUS’ Twilight (태양이 떨어진다) and their winter debut, Valkyrie. Both feature a similar guitar loop and dynamic percussion. I can easily tell what kind of vibe the guys are cultivating, and it fits them well. But like VERIVERY and Cherry Bullet’s follow-ups, Twilight isn’t quite as strong as its predecessor.

The track hits us with its chorus right off the bat — a fractured barrage of diverging vocal hooks followed by a clobbering EDM breakdown. Being thrown in the deep end like this is immensely appealing, but hinders the song’s overall effect. This two-part chorus feels intricate and overwhelming the first time through, but is repeated too often (without enough variation) to keep the momentum going. Yes, we get some dubstep (!) tossed in just before Twilight’s bridge, and an extra influx of vocals at its climax, but the halting structure of the hook starts to exhaust after a few listens. A last minute blast of higher-tempo percussion could have brought the song to a more interesting endpoint.

Moody boy group verses bookend the oft-repeated choruses, mostly inconspicuous except for some stirring vocal layering around the two-minute mark. ONEUS sell the song with above-average polish, which helps cover some of Twilight’s shortcomings. As an evolution of Valkyrie’s theatrical sound, the song works just fine. But, it could have been an absolute knockout.

Hooks	8
Production	8
Longevity	8
Bias	8
RATING	8

14 thoughts on “Song Review: ONEUS – Twilight”

I actually like this better than Valkyrie, as I could never get behind Valkyrie’s chorus for some (definitely personal) reason. Twilight’s melody is just much more appealing to me. But the fact that the two-part chorus is repeated three times in full (and the edm second half once more) just gets on my nerves. I had the same gripe with N.Flying’s Rooftop – the chorus melodies repeat too much! I love two-part choruses, but I don’t want the two parts thrown in my face. This isn’t a dealbreaker for me, as I still love Rooftop and I still enjoy this song, but it does diminish my enjoyment.

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Nick says:

May 30, 2019 at 10:18 pm

Glad you like it! While I’m not 100% onboard with this song (and Valkyrie has only gotten better with age, for me), I still think ONEUS is one of the year’s more exciting debuts so far.

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I agree. That’s such a good chorus second half, but it’s really let down by the structure itself, which I feel pulls back every time it should be forging ahead. The verses aren’t poorly written at all, and they even made a brief dubstep break work (something I didn’t know was possible). It’s weird to see a song where all the parts are really good get dragged down by the arrangement. Usually it’s annoying breaks and bad additions that mess things up, but here… the good parts interfere with the other good parts?

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Nick says:

May 30, 2019 at 10:16 pm

You explained it better than I did. It really is a structural issue. It’s like, we get all the good stuff within the first thirty seconds and the rest of the track is just left spinning its wheels.

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