About a month ago, Jeon Somi released the underdeveloped Extra, which turned out to be a pre-release for her new mini album. This is only her second mini album in seven years, and third album overall. The pace may be glacial, but it’s nice to finally hear something more substantial from her. Closer acts as the album’s title track and pulls her further into evocative dance territory.
Closer has a stuttering, atmospheric appeal that unfolds in a different way than most K-pop tracks. At just over two and a half minutes in length, there’s not proper time for the song to deliver the sense of build and release it wants (and needs) to, but there are some interesting ingredients forging this song sketch. Closer spends almost half of its running time slowly building up to its central beat drop — an approach that would have worked better on a longer song. Once we hit that chorus, the song hits us with a hypnotic hook that interpolates Ben E King’s classic Stand By Me (or more accurately, Sean Kingston’s King-interpolating Beautiful Girls), immediately followed by a shout-chant punctuation. It’s very moody and engaging, but we only have about half a song here.
Before you know it, Closer suddenly cuts off without delivering the payoff promised by all its sonic foreplay. I understand the desire for short songs in our streaming/TikTok generation and this is why so much current pop music is flat and vibes driven. You can get away with two minutes of monotony that never promises anything more, but a brief runtime actively sabotages a track like Closer and robs it of the exact qualities that make it good. It’s so frustrating because this could have easily been an addictive, cyclically-structured banger in the legacy of miss A’s Touch but its financial pursuits clearly outweigh its artistry.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 9 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 8 |
| RATING | 8 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
*takes a deep breath* DAMN YOU STREAMING CULTURE, DAMN YOU TIKTOK, DAMN YOU WHOEVER NORMALIZED SONGS UNDER 3 MINUTES, I HOPE YOUR PILLOWS ARE WARM TONIGHT AND JYP APPEARS WEARING HIS HORRENDOUS PLASTIC PANTS IN YOUR DREAM (● ˃̶͈̀ロ˂̶͈́)੭ꠥ⁾⁾
But anyways, the chorus is beautiful, magnetic and the beat is quite atmospheric, but it sadly doesn’t has enough room to develop into something even better and bigger (refer to my 1st paragraph). A shame cause this would have easily vaulted to the 9s.
7.75 (8, 9, 7, 7) for me.
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You’re such a beautiful diva🙂↕️
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great production but the song as a whole is soooo boring. it’s almost an EDM remake of Beautiful Girls with rewritten lyrics. what is Somi even doing anymore, this is just lazy and tired
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Oh good heavens, if ever someone wanted to buck the 3 minute limit, it would be with a song like this. This thing could easily have been its own 10-minute long full symphony. Does it even loop itself well, if I were to play it on repeat, or does the abrupt ending preclude that?
Ah well. Choices. Choices were made.
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i cant even consider this a song lmao.
sure its good but, this is.. a teaser.
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It’s better than that boring song she released before. I wasn’t expecting the beautiful girls sample lol but the song ends out of nowhere (damn TikTok) and the music video was ruined by the ugly AI scenes.
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IT’S SO GOOD but i was waiting for a bridge and a last chorus but instead all of a sudden the song ended lol.
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8 is too high lol
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I enjoy what we have here, it’s pretty hypnotic. The sample was done well too, it wasn’t used in lieu of having good musical ideas to include but as a base instead. I hope creators on social media have a field day with this; it’s not often I’m excited for checking out remixes/rearrangements for a song, but it’s clear they can take this farther
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This interpolates Beautiful Girls so extensively that I unfortunately find it really disorienting. It’s got some interesting parts, but I’m not sure if it ties them together all that way
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