In many ways, 8TURN’s December single Like A Friend was the smash that got away — a spring/summer track released in the dead of winter as everyone was cobbling together their year-end best-of lists. Making matters worse, the group never promoted it until weeks later. I haven’t listened to that song nearly as much as I should have, but find it very charming each time it comes around. Now, it’s finally time for a proper follow-up with new single Electric Heart.
Having heard clips of this one, I’ve been looking forward to it. August has been a pretty lousy month for big pop melodies and Electric Heart promised a huge chorus supported by bounding, anthemic production. In this way, it’s very reminiscent of ZEROBASEONE’s excellent Blue from earlier in the year. The full song is a little less streamlined than I’d expected, making me curious how it will fare with time. Like Blue, Electric Heart builds to tremendous peaks but also spends much of its time in a slower gear. This contributes to a sense of build, though the arrangement could take even greater advantage of the contrast.
At times, Electric Heart sounds almost like a survival series signal song, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I like it because it’s taking a pop song approach I always enjoy, but its sense of uplift also feels increasingly generic and that keeps the track from becoming top shelf material. This could easily improve with time, but for now I’m tempering my rating until I see just how much I return to the song over the next few weeks.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 9 |
| Bias | 9 |
| RATING | 8.5 |
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
*in Comic Book Guy’s voice* Best. Birthday. Gift. Ever. (alright, maybe 2nd best since Riize also released Memories on my 17th and it’s totally not cause Sungchan was shirtless there :9)
The song has HUGE Last Festival vibes, from the subdued, atmospheric-like production to a more robust-like chorus (except this one is more punchier and shout along like), and it’s obviously a compliment. The song adopts a dance beat and the melodies are solid with a great build up, from a melodic, soft pre-chorus to a shouty/punchy chorus which reminds me of ZB1’s Blue to an extent. I wish the production was more robust, but it’s no problem when the melodies are superb. Thank you 8TURN for saving August (and giving me a great birthday gift, I should stan you guys for this!)
8.75 (9, 8, 9, 9) for me. I have a HUGE feeling it’ll age to 9+ for me and I actually almost gave this that high rating!
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Happy birthday!
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Happy Birthday!! 🎂🎉🎊🍰
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This is the song that’s sounds like this. Every boy band needs one of these in their oeuvre. The producers added the obligatory buckets of white noise on the chorus-sung-as-a-chorus to add that extra oomph.
This one here, its fine. If it scratches your itch, fine, great.
Me, I don’t consider going between two notes back and forth (Aflat-Bflat, later Gflat-Aflat) to be “melody”. Well, at least someone here can hit a high note.
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This is nice, we could all use more earnest dance pop in our lives these days. It also inspired me to listen to the amazing Electric Hearts by WayV.
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The fact that I didn’t even remember this group existed since 2023 is sending me 💀
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