Last week, EPEX teased their new album with pre-release Picasso — a track so confrontational and unpleasant that it seemed to put a curse on the entire industry. Seriously, every new song released in its wake has struggled to reach the high quality of July’s first half! Now, the group is grateful for our collective tears with their new title track Grateful To Tears (눈물나게 고마워) — or at least, that’s the wild conspiracy theory I’m taking from it.
Grateful To Tears is a complete one eighty from Picasso‘s brash assault. The song catches EPEX in soft rock mode, a style that’s worked well for them before. This is a tried-and-true boy group formula that’s been especially popular this year. Do it well and you’ve got a stirring, emotional highlight. Otherwise, this style threatens to become quite generic. Though Grateful To Tears is well-written and performed, I fear it leans closer to the latter.
With a song this straightforward, I’m looking for something that stands out as idiosyncratic to the group. This could be found in many ways, from songwriting and production to the execution from the idols themselves. Try as I might, I can’t hear this in Grateful To Tears. The song goes down easy, offering a jolt of energy in the right places and enough emotive crooning to choreograph an effective dance to. But the lack of anything unique makes this track much less memorable than it should be — especially when stacked against similar efforts. File this under: pleasant, but very inessential.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 7 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7.5 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Remember 26-27 July 2023 when we got THREE 8.75-rated songs in a row, but Koong showed up and ruined what could have been a great day for K-Pop (featuring Fantastics), and then the remaining 4-5 days of July went by without much fare, though J-Pop was doing well (I also believe that song prolly cursed Infinite’s comeback at that time) This is how I feel about this month. It was solid, not too strong like June last year, but then Picasso showed up, ruined every single momentum and put a curse on the next 10 days.
Well, this song might as well be their Do or Die (a song worth bearing their disastrous pre-release counterparts), but unlike Do or Die, doesn’t do much to stand out or showcase the guys’ personality. It’s an alright song, I like the little percussions in the verses and the falsetto chorus is pretty.
8.25 (9, 8, 8, 8) for me. Idk how I’ll feel about this in the next few days, but yeah, I lowkey like this one.
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I’ll take Picasso. I know I’m in the minority of people who love it – it was unusual, had an interesting industrial soundscape. This is pleasantly forgettable. They suddenly pulled all their punches. Too bad, I would have listened to an entire album that went in the direction of Picasso.
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For the record, I don’t think Picasso is that bad. It’s not a song style that I particularly like, but I’ve heard worse, plus this one has some nice vocal moments hidden under all that abrasive music. If I were to throw them a bone, I’d say they were going for something unconventional, innovative or fragmented…hence the reference to Picasso?🤷🏻♀️
Anyway, about this song, I really like it. It may be considered “generic”, but I’ve said this before, generic Kpop is what I fell in love with so this sound is usually a win for me. It reminds me of a Red Velvet song and that’s always good too. I’ll say 8.25
The album has a couple of nice bsides…nothing really special, but very listenable.
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