IVE had a rough English-language debut earlier this year with an overly artificial cover of Icona Pop’s 2013 hit All Night. Mixing issues and heavy-handed vocals effects marred that effort, so it makes sense the group would team up with an established producer who could iron out some of those issues. They picked a good one in David Guetta. I’ve enjoyed his music for years (almost decades at this point!) and of course IVE have quite a few solid hits of their own. Unfortunately, new single Supernova Love doesn’t capture the best of either artist.
More and more, we find modern pop songs that sound like AI. It’s an uncanny valley type sheen — vocals smoothed to the point they feel drained of humanity, melodies that sound like echoes of other songs we’ve heard before. In this case, Supernova Love‘s opening strings may sound familiar because they’re an interpolation of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano instrumental Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence — refashioned as a glistening dance track. Even though this well-known melody becomes the driving force behind the song, Love somehow finds a way to accommodate nine (!) other writers/producers.
The music video shortens the song by about a minute, but even in its extended iteration Supernova Love doesn’t take advantage of the best aspects of dance music. Rather than ebb and flow and build to glorious peaks, it simply bops along with limited ideas. The celestial production is quite satisfying as an idea, but IVE’s individual quirks get lost in the mix. Rather than sounding elusive or mysterious, they simply come across as bored and copy/pasted onto the beat. A gutsier performance during the verses would have countered the layered chorus and resulted in a more engaging set of textures. This is a definite improvement over All Night, yet succumbs to many of the same issues. IVE have too much star power to sound this flat and AI’ed.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 7 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 8 |
| RATING | 7.75 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
A little generic, but I liked the interpolation. Not a fan of the “la di la di da”s here, but I find the song nice. And the chorus also sounds a bit too smoothened for its own good.
Straight 8 for me.
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I agree with you
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I was actually excited for this after hearing the preview, and then subsequently searching out and listening to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence for the first time to find out where that timeless melody comes from, but the full song isn’t doing as much for me as I’d hoped. The production and idea of singing over a normally wordless melody had me thinking this would be more like aespa’s Hold On Tight from last year, but while pretty this is no where near that good. The lyrics also just feel kind of awkward to me – “occupy my heart” doesn’t have a good cadence!
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“More and more, we find modern pop songs that sound like AI. It’s an uncanny valley type sheen” This, in fact, disturb me a lot, however I blame it onto the bad mixing production instead of the trend.
Perfume, the EDM J-Pop group, does a lot of editing their voice’s personality away, but still managed to smooth the overall production, due to their bombastic and solid instrument plays under their vocal. However, more music now tend to use more laided-back type cafe-friendly beats and instrument that just giving no impact on the polished vocal. What’s even worse is, the current pop music did not have a solid vocalist that allow the producer to do such a polish, too…
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What are they doing to IVE?
My heart bleeds to see the way Starshit has been squandering their success.
As a DIVE (and pop fan in general), 2024 has been abysmal.
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STARSHIT DIDN’T EVEN PROMOTE THIS DUDE, NOT A SINGLE FUCKING TEASER
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I didn’t really want promo n for this. I’m not surprised either, they cut corners on this mv
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welcome back to another series of “david guetta lazily interpolates another old hit’s melody”
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better than All Night, but that chorus could’ve been layered/mixed better. funnily, it’s like another All Night situation in that regard. they need to hit up Red Velvet’s producers.
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This is not it! They keep going downwards. They have to go back to their earlier days.
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I’m honestly sick of this relentless obsession k-pop labels have with western producers/artists/charts. Since BTS went global even their music has been watered down (except Dynamite and Butter have killer hooks, I’ll agree with that) and everything else HYBE puts out is even more average by any standards. IVE released some absolute MONSTER songs like “Eleven”, “Love Dive”, “I AM” – I became a MASSIVE fan because they had their own flavour and didn’t copy the US trends; and then it all went down hill when they tried to go more hip hop or cool to appeal to the US market, and the songs simply aren’t there so they are slowly losing the Korean charts, beside not hitting the US charts. Rants over, this is a 7/10 for me only because Sakamoto’s melody is UNTOUCHABLE in my world.
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Summarized it perfectly.
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Personally i rlly love it. The melody is beautifully haunting, and i like the electronic flourishes throughout the song. I thought the rap was awkward in the mv but it fits better in the spotify version. I dont mind the airbrushed vocals, im used to that in kpop (TWICE, lol).
Personal rating: 8.75
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If you asked 2014 me, I would’ve said the same about this being a promising collab. Now that Guetta has joined the trend of badly redoing classics that aren’t even old enough yet to ‘need’ remaking, I am very much not of that opinion anymore. ‘I Don’t Wanna Wait’ with One Republic felt like a slap in the face to the iconic Moldovan Dragostea Din Tei (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnopHCL1Jk8). I’m sure O-Zone are getting profit from this, but I strongly dislike the trend of badly rehashing existing iconic music, movies, and literature for an easy profit.
My personal one-sided beef with a David Guetta aside, this is.. fine I guess. The performance feels a bit flat at times. More passion, more energy! That said I’ll give it credit for having some nice melodies and a catchy beat. Not enough to make the playlist, but I don’t hate it.
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this song could use a bit more work. It’s fine though
7.5 (7, 7, 8, 8) for me
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I mean, 10 out of 10 for Sakamoto’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. Other than that, this song doesn’t have any sticking power for me. I’d honestly rather just listen to Sakamoto’s piano version and leave vocals out of it.
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God this was like Kepler’s Shooting Star but just blander. That chorus is such an earworm.
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The year of IVE in 2024 was a huge NO for me. All of his releases this year for me remained in the middle, from the B-Side to the title track. To be honest, I have a big problem with most of his tracks, although I admit that they have their qualities and some reproducible hits. About this song, well, IVE manages to bring David Guetta together and add something unimpressive to his collection. To be fair, David Guetta has had your era
I’m going to give it a 7.5 because I know I won’t go back to that
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It’s ok, but it feels incomplete. I kept waiting for the real singing to start. It’s as if someone forgot to include the members’ voices on top of the background vocals (I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else, but that’s what crossed my mind while listening to it).
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Starshit is doing everything but give WJSN a comeback.
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I absolutely love this song, I wish they play the version 9/10
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