It’s a day of solo releases from members of some of my favorite girl groups. Unfortunately, these songs usually pale in comparison to work from the members’ respective groups. In the case of Yuju, this is by design. Nothing she’s released on her own has tried to recapture GFriend’s appeal. That’s completely within her rights as an artist, but a sleepy track like First Love Is A Curse (첫사랑은 저주다) doesn’t do much for me.
We’ve veered dangerously close to coffeehouse fare here. The production is too robust for that, but the song’s lowkey vibe and softly swinging instrumental certainly threaten to fade into the background. Yuju has one of my favorite voices in K-pop, but much of that is dependent on the style of song she’s singing. The days of robust power notes have passed, replaced with this somewhat generic execution. The charm of her tone pokes through here and there on First Love Is A Curse, but the track is ultimately not interesting enough to take full advantage of it.
| Hooks | 7 |
| Production | 7 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7 |
Grade: C-
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Im sorry, no Diss to mama yuju but who the fuh actually would want to play something like this, it’s not bad it’s just the equivalent of Starbuck, thick lashes, socks tucked into leggings 15 year old girls, nothing special😭🙏
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I liked this song
I think it ended way too fast, I honestly thought the outro was some sort of instrumental break before a big chorus kinda situation
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Are you planning to review Suyeon’s (Weki Meki) comeback as well?
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Not planning to
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The only one having fun here is the guitarist.
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I actually wish she fully leaned into coffeehouse fare for this one. I don’t think it works straddling that line. I’m neither pleasantly chillin, passionately groovin, nor enthusiastically rockin.
7,6,7,7 = 6.75
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I think the problem is that she’s making music that she likes.
There’s nothing wrong with making music that you like, but, like Hyolyn, just because the artist likes it doesn’t mean anyone else will.
I think this is solidly okay, and it’s interesting as her oeuvre grows to see how each new release builds on or calls back to another (e.g. Sequence was kind of a sequel to Peach Blossom, I heard a little bit of Play in here), but by and large I wish she’d do something interesting.
She has a famously great voice that can and has done just about anything it was asked to do. It’d be nice if she let it do a dancefloor track again; Dalala was great.
Jo Yuri, whose work I like a lot, has a sleepy voice, but she’s holding her own on pretty big tracks while also putting out soft lullaby songs, too. It’d be nice if Yuju tried doing the same thing.
Here’s hoping for the album.
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