A K-pop act’s title track isn’t always the best song on their album, even if it’s the one most people will hear. Sometimes, b-sides deserve recognition too. In the singles-oriented world of K-pop, I want to spotlight some of these buried treasures and give them the props they deserve.
This will be a weird “buried treasure” post because there’s going to be as much ranting as raving. If performed by a different group, NCT Wish’s Ode To Love would probably be my favorite album of the year. The songs (most of them, at least) are super solid and nod back to SM Entertainment sounds I love. However, longtime readers know my ears have an aversion to higher-pitched sounds (ie: my struggle with trap percussion) and it’s so hard for me to get past the arrangement of Wish’s vocals. I don’t even think it’s the fault of the guys themselves because when they sing solo they frequently sound quite good. However, the producers often stack their vocals together and — rather than create depth and harmony — it comes across as shrill, flat and compressed. I just can’t listen to these songs without imagining SHINee’s mighty blend — or even RIIZE, honestly.
Rant over. As pure pop songwriting, there’s plenty to love on this album. A handful of tracks stuck out to me, but the late album highlight Everglow keeps pulling me back. The vocal arrangement is particularly frustrating here, but if I force myself to get past that I’m thrilled by the bold electro-funk sound and dynamic structure. The chorus pulses with 2013-era SHINee bombast, which is one the highest compliments I can give to K-pop. This is the sound I want all over SM’s music, but I also want it full-bodied with a sense of depth and space. If Everglow were tangible like putty, I Iong to pull and stretch it out, removing the incessant compression and letting the music fully flourish.
| Hooks | 9 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 9 |
| Bias | 8 |
| RATING | 8.5 |
Grade: B
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
This feels a bit like Songbird upgraded. What other highlights could you point out? Mine would be the run from Feel the Beat to Crush.
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Feel The Beat, 2.0 and Crush. I also like Glow Up because the vocals don’t bother me in that one lol
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I feel like I am listening to a long lost SHINee song in the Married to the Music – Dream Girl era. But the production is just so off, so flat. The production is so compressed that it does not allow the music to breathe, build tension, release tension, repeat. Have the quiet parts so that the louder parts just pop, then release to the quieter parts.
Also, though NCT Wish might be good vocalists, SHINee are exceptional vocalists who know their parts so well they can carve into the lines adding color and depth when that is needed but then play it completely straight on the line when that is needed. NCT Wish either aren’t that or aren’t allowed to be that.
SHINee “Dream Girl” for the kids here – I like this version, because it is live live (about half), the live mics are the headsets but they still use the prop mics as if they are the live mics (mostly). Back in “mics as dance props” era – ZEA had one, Super Junior had another. Also the set is back in the era of elaborate frameworks as set – qv various Super Junior f(x) Girls’ Generation mv’s. I think SM must have had a warehouse full of moving frames and blocks and box lights and just swapped them all around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZh355py1Kw
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You described the problem so well. And thanks for linking the SHINee performance; Dream Girl is legendary. 😊
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This song is great, definitely the best on the album, but my complaint is the same as Nick’s–the shrill vocal arrangement :’) I especially like the ascending chords in the prechorus, though I’m sure I’ve heard that exact same chord sequence in a Shinee song (Heart Attack or Married to the Music? Which happen to be two of my favorite Shinee songs lol, so I’m not complaining). Also the chorus melody sounds almost identical to Wish’s Songbird, interestingly
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Finally!! I’ve been waiting for this! I knew Nick would come around and do a buried treasure eventually. Though I LOVE Ode to Love and it has pretty much already cemented itself as AOTY for me, I agree that the vocal mixing/layering throughout leaves much to be desired, 😬 especially on this track.
Other than the incompetence of the producers 😂 (which is ofc the main issue here) as an ardent Wishzennie I have several other thoughts on why this may be the case.
One problem is that 4/6 of the members arguably do have somewhat shrill or nasally vocal tones. Even with good production, their voices may be an acquired taste for some. This is less of an issue for the two rappers since they have fewer sung parts, but it’s a bit more noticeable when a couple of their lead/sub vocalists handle choruses or more vocally challenging lines. Add bad production onto that, and even the members who don’t have shrill voices start sounding a little off, like in Poppop. (Nick’s favorite 🤡) So what happens when several shrill voices are layered together?
Choruses sung by all the members in unison are obviously quite popular/common with SM. I have observed from listening to RIIZE (A LOT) and watching their recording behind videos that the member whose voice will become the foundation of the song records first. His voice seems to be layered on top of the arrangement during these shared parts, and the song is kind of built around his vocals. (Forgive me; I don’t know anything about music production so idk the technical terms for all this stuff.) Because this occurs in so many songs, this member’s voice is integral to the “color” and signature sound of the group. For RIIZE, this member is their main vocalist, Sohee. (Yup, had to stick a Sohee mention in here. 😜 I haven’t been promoting him enough.) He always records first. You can check any of their recording behind videos to see that this is the case (except Impossible, Wonbin records first for that song.) His voice is the most clearly distinguishable during shared choruses, whereas the voices of the more vocally weak members and rappers can be detected very little or none at all. This can be heard throughout the entirety of RIIZE’s discography when there are choruses sung by all the members. Some recent examples are Fame, Kill Shot (Japanese OST), All of You (Japanese single), etc., where Sohee’s voice is the most apparent. Rather than a whole group of six different people with unique voices, it often sounds more like three Sohees singing the chorus together, along with maybe two Wonbins and an Anton for good measure. 😂
So where am I going with all this? Being an SM group, naturally NCT Wish uses a similar method. And as we have established, the member who carries most of RIIZE’s songs is their main vocalist. Using that logic, you would expect that member for NCT Wish to be Jaehee, their main vocalist. But you’d be wrong. It’s actually lead vocalist (and center) Yushi, who naturally has a slightly shrill vocal tone and also lacks well developed singing technique. Because Wish is a bit short staffed in the vocal department, he is often assigned parts that are too difficult for him. (This is not intended as a criticism of Yushi; I absolutely adore him. And I do enjoy his voice as well, especially when it is utilized to play to his strengths.) So in songs like Everglow, you’re left with tinny production and what sounds like five or six high-pitched Yushis straining to hit the notes, with maybe a little Ryo, Jaehee, and the occasional Sion sprinkled in there too.
And the third problem that contributes to this is that Wish is down one main vocalist. Anyone who is even a little familiar with NCT knows that they have on average about 3 main vocalists per subunit. Of the seven members that were finalists in LASTART, only six ended up debuting. Jaehee and Jungmin were to be the two main vocalists of Wish, but Jungmin left predebut. That leaves Wish with only one main vocalist, Jaehee, who trained for only three months and had no formal training of any kind before joining SM (but he’s really good imo,) Sion, who has a pretty tone and is a decent lead vocalist, and the other four guys who are talented in many ways but don’t really excel at singing.
None of this would really even be a problem for their music if their producers could get their act together; they honestly have no excuse for this. I’d like to compare Wish to CYE as an example. (These two are basically tied for second my favorite group rn.) As opposed to Wish, CYE sounds AMAZING in their recordings, so you would assume they have several skilled vocalists. In reality, though, no vocalists from their survival show (Project 7) even made the cut. A lot of people expressed concern when their lineup was announced; I wasn’t a fan yet at that time but the impression I get is that everyone who watched the show was like “who is going to sing??” The group is full of rappers, dancers, and visuals, and this is very apparent when you hear them try to sing in live performances. Their main vocalist, Seo Kyoungbae (who has a magnificent tone that almost makes up for his technical shortcomings, easily one of my favorite voices in K-pop) is just a seventeen year old who taught himself to sing and dance in his room and has zero formal training. 😭 But despite their extreme lack of skill, all of them happen to have naturally beautiful and expressive voices that their producers utilize SO WELL. I mean, their voices are the primary reason their songs are so good. So really CYE isn’t any better off than Wish in terms of skill, if anything maybe a little worse bc they don’t have a Jaehee. Yet if Uncore, a small company, can manage to give their unskilled singers excellent music with production that feels tailored to their individual strengths, I see no reason why SM shouldn’t be able to do the same for Wish. So yeah, it’s frustrating.
Ok my yap session is finally over 😅
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Sorry if this was unintelligible btw 🙃
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Also the moral of the story is we just need Sweetune to come back and show the whole industry how to layer vocals the right way 😭
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It is old school SM-style to make the “chorus as a chorus” but push one of the voices forward in the mix. It helps on so many levels – thickening up the sound on the recording, live singing with support on the music shows and in concert, ease of vocal reassignments during military service when one or more voices are not present.
As the resident ELF, I always go to Super Junior examples with my bias Kyuhyun very forward in the mix. This example – interesting to see who in rotation is covering Siwon’s lines – where was Siwon this day? You can hear Siwon’s voice on the backing track but see and hear someone else singing over those lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jefIuJqCcHQ
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Yes!! It’s one of the best things about SM’s music (when they do it right.) I always liked the full, rich sound that comes from pushing the best one or two voices to the front (like you said) and kind of omitting the weaker and more unpleasant voices, but I hadn’t ever thought about the other benefits that you mentioned. It’s an excellent strategy…unless you choose the wrong person to push to the front, like in the case of NCT Wish. (It just really shouldn’t have been Yushi. 😭 Idk what their logic is/was in choosing him as the member to lead when Jaehee exists and has that classic SM sound to his voice, but alas. I can’t think of any other group that they’ve made this mistake with. Also I know it sounds like I’m hating on Yushi but he really is actually one of my favorite members; I’m not trying to blame him for this.)
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Off topic – your rant also reminded me of the time when Onew was off somewhere, and Leetuek filled in. Sharing, in case you haven’t seen this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNsmraflNu4
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I hadn’t seen this, and it made me laugh so hard. The way they just subbed Leeteuk in and he made his little guest appearance there at the end was so random and bizarre in the best way. He blends in with SHINee pretty well though. 😂 Now I can’t help but wonder how this even came about, or if anything like this has happened before or since. Like did they call him up asking “hey Leeteuk can you come help with SHINee’s Inkigayo stage today?” Or did he just volunteer himself? I have so many questions now. 😭 Only SuJu and SHINee could come up with these antics
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Oh, there is more. And even more between TVXQ Max Changmin and Super Junior. The usual lore is that Changmin wants to be in SuJu because they are more fun. Then oppa Yunho pulls him back to the hard work at TVXQ.
Donghae, Siwon and Changmin did their military service all at the same time with the Seoul police, and there are innumerable fan videos of every festival ever performing a mashup of their songs. mho – Changmin out dances the other two.
Then there were all the drag performances back when. I leave you to look up Changmin – Kyuhyun – MinHo – SuHo. Also Super Junior all as Elsa.
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I enjoyed reading this entire essay and pretty much agreed with everything 🙂
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Aww, thanks
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I also noticed in a reply you made to someone else that you mentioned you found the vocals in Glow Up tolerable, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s partly bc the song is pitched in a more comfortable range so poor Yushi (and the others) aren’t straining so much. (I also hear A LOT more of Jaehee in the mix of Glow Up’s chorus compared to other songs on the album, so I’m sure that probably made a difference too.)
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I think that’s certainly the case. Songs and production need to be tailored to the strengths and limitations of the group that’s performing them.
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Finally got around to listening to this album following the high of today’s releases, it’s real solid. Agree with the general sentiment that the groups’ vocal tones are probably the weakest part of it. When they debuted I was hoping it would be a situation like when the first NCT groups debuted and they would grow into their voices, but don’t think that’s happening here.
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