Review

Song Review: CORTIS – GO!

Posted on by 61 Comments

It’s always exciting when a new group debuts under a major agency, and CORTIS have a big legacy to live up to. GO! is technically a pre-release, so we can’t call it their official debut yet, but it offers a glimpse of Big Hit’s first new boy group since TXT’s debut in 2019. Information about the guys has highlighted their self-producing approach, which includes input on every facet of their work — from song to music video. Members have already played a part in past Big Hit tracks.

This has been a very strong year for debut boy groups, so GO! has much to live up to on that front as well. Within that context, I’d put GO! all the way at the bottom of the pack. This is quite shocking from an agency as huge and influential as Big Hit, but the song confirms all the worries I had as information about CORTIS began to dribble out. I fear this debut may mark the start of a sort of “post-K-pop” era, as GO! carries absolutely no hallmarks of the genre I first fell in love with. Instead, this track feels targeted specifically to Western markets with its swaggy, slurred delivery and absence of any sort of virtuosic performance style.

The thing is, self-composing a song doesn’t automatically make you a “genius,” as many K-pop fans like to claim. Anyone can write a song. That doesn’t mean it’ll be a good song! If GO! is an indication of CORTIS’s self-producing style, we may need to go back to the drawing board. The instrumental regurgitates bad samples we’ve heard a million times before, the vocals are smothered with ugly effects and the melody is a flat-line of disengaged nothingness, propped up with incessant posturing that feels utterly exhausting. This might all be forgivable with a well-conceived song driving the vibes, but like so many recent tracks GO! has about one-and-a-half ideas repeated over and over with no sense of growth or personality.

I guess this might be what Generation MZ is looking for in music and CORTIS may find a niche within that subset of listeners, but after such a long wait between Big Hit debuts, I find this song borderline insulting and a very worrisome harbinger for their career. It’s certainly the worst “first taste” of an artist the agency has ever given us.

Hooks 6
 Production 6
 Longevity 6
 Bias 5
 RATING 5.75

Grade: F

61 thoughts on “Song Review: CORTIS – GO!”

  1. For a group that’s supposed to be “colouring outside the lines” this is pretty in the lines. At this point send it back to the studio because it’s honestly so cringe, it seems like these groups are kinda built off of appropriating black culture and its getting really annoying. ☠️

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  3. Never have I heard such ugly, godawful autotune in my 7 years as a K-Pop stan and I’ve survived Ciipher’s I Like You, Ravi’s Still Nirvana (which I admit is a sweet guilty pleasure) and Enhypen’s Bad Desire… ಠ_ಠ

    5.25 (6, 4, 6, 5) for me. Also, as I read your review before seeing the rating, I was expecting 3s or 4s cause of how pissed you sounded 😭

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  5. take their credits with a huge grain of salt … james was touted as one of the writers for magnetic so imagine my surprise when I find out what he actually contributed … “bae bae bae” and “dash-da-da” 😭 the whole self producing group thing is just a concept rather than reality

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  6. SO bad it’s tragic. they’re making the music I was hearing when I was their age, which was about 10 years ago. I wouldn’t have minded if this was released then but this shit just sounds so outdated now. both BND and TWS’ pre-releases excited me, but this made me lower my expectations for their debut song.

    and it makes me glad Sangwon left HYBE if this was what they were gonna end up with 💀

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  8. What’s wrong with me, i kinda like this song. I swear I see how people dislike this song but tbh, for an album intro, its really not terrible? The beat is nice, its chill, i dont think they were going for anything else?

    It’s like the closest to Travis Scott (whos music i dont really like) we’ve gotten in kpop so far?

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    • dude me too….i feel like people are being way too harsh on them when this isn’t even their debut song. i also don’t see what’s wrong with them having a more gen z sound to them and their concept being really different from txt’s. it’s a hype song and it’s going in my playlist so 🤷‍♀️

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    • And it’s definitely not new to Big Hit imo. It’s kinda a successor to TXT’s Cat & Dog (in an extreme way, with all the West hiphop-isms). The autotune isn’t as Set-Me-Free-Pt. 2 grating too. Go is fine and even enjoyable when I hear it.

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  9. it’s nice to have a group that actually introduces themselves and their concept and tone in their first release it’s just a shame that their tone and concept appears to be ‘annoying gen alpha teenage boy’ and their concept appears to be basically the same as trainee a’s right down to the axe body spray beat and the vaguely disgusting bragging.

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  10. Maybe the title track will be better…because this is..not it. Especially for Bighit, after successfully debuting TXT 6 years ago.. maybe it’ll catch on?

    Ugh. I just don’t get it.

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  12. I guess I’m just mostly annoyed by them calling this a “new beat” because as one of the ‘olds’ they’re referring to in the lyrics there is nothing new about this beat. But watch this become a hit, it’s just so depressing to me when songs which I dislike inevitably blow up and set the trends :(((

    I knew next to nothing about Trainee A but all of this just makes me so glad that Jihoon debuted in TWS, truly.

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  14. As a gen alpha/z(for reference im born in June 2008) we do not all act like this or like this type of music❤️

    I remember Mr. Bias list posted that they thought the song was going to be 1:18 seconds long and to be honest I really wish it was☠️

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  15. I managed to get through about 20 seconds of the song, but at least the review was a good read 😂

    Getting me ready for Key’s comeback tomorrow, hopefully he won’t drop the ball 🙏

    Liked by 3 people

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  16. As one of the olds born in the ’80s…this is insulting to listen to. Disappointing with all the great BG debuts this year like AHOF, Close Your Eyes, and NouerA.

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    • It’s crazy, right, because those are all survival shows groups, so you’d think they’d be a little more slapdash in nature because some of the kids have only trained for a few months, some of them for years, and then they all train together for just a few months to make an album…

      But the wealthiest kpop agency in the world has years to prepare for a group’s debut and they come up with this…?

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  17. I feel like they couldn’t decide if they wanted this song to be an elevator-music song or if they wanted to get off the elevator and grab attention, and wound up squishing the song between the door and the wall instead.

    Everything just feels… pinched. The voices are so autotuned that they aren’t allowed to shine. I’m hardly against the use of autotune as an instrument in music, but for what purpose here? The rapper clearly has talent, but he’s not given room to flex. The stop-start of the chorus is frustrating because the pre chorus feels like it’s building somewhere and then there’s not even an anticlimax. It’s like being stuck in traffic that stops and starts and crawls but never has the decency to either stop entirely or speed ahead.

    It’s not chill or relaxed because there are enough attempts to grab attention. It’s more languid because it never does anything with those attempts (like the nostalgic pre chorus) and thereby ends up being frustrating, which ruins the relaxed vibe.

    And then there’s the cursing. Gnarly (which really grew on me) had the decency to at least be self-aware that it was over-the-top and trying too hard to be GenZ/Alpha. This also comes across as trying too hard but without any self-awareness.

    I don’t hate the song as much as others seem to, but I don’t like it at all either.

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  18. to think i was abt to make a joke abt this song being spiritually israeli only to find out that this song is produced by johnny goldstein who quite literally is an ex idf soldier + ultra right wing zionist

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  20. II can add this to a pretty substantial list (in my mind) of K-pop songs that would be better if they weren’t K-pop songs in the first place.

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  21. Oh, late to the party. (shrug)

    I would like to add that the outro is particularly bad. “I’m the new shit, I’m the newwwwwww shit”. No, no you are not.

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    • It actually did 😭😭 Nick rated this a 6 initially, but he got so mad that he ended up lowering the longevity from a 7 to a 6 and thus the whole rating down to 5.75 in real time 😭😭

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  23. They should have just released this as a conceptual film and not a prerelease with an MV because the song is much more tolerable with the performance/dancing to focus on. It makes me think how when RIIZE debuted they first released Siren as a performance vid and everyone was disappointed and saying that it sounded like an NCT reject but the actual debut of Get a Guitar was very different. For their sake I hope it’s the same case here.

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  28. I do sometimes need some junk food to fill my stomach even if I fully knew it was bad for my health

    Anyway, I get it that they just wanna viiiiibe and have fuuun and the music is probably a reflection of their own music tasteee you know some Travis Scott some Playboi Carti some Don Toliver

    I enjoy this song to a degree because I can’t lie I’m pretty weak when it comes to easy listening and catchy music, but I also understand that this song feel really cheap and underwhelming when we remember the years and years of excellent K-Pop legacies from the old days, even from group in their own agency

    Final score 6.25 (7, 6, 6, 6)

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  29. I honestly don’t even hate this. It’s not the best thing ever but I don’t mind a Travis Scott knock off, and I don’t mind a little cringe and noise. It’s something a little different in the idol landscape right now, a little rough around the edges (even if it’s a contrived, manufactured “roughness”)

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