Release Date: 29 May 2026
Song Count: 11
Duration: 33 minutes, 26 seconds
Rating: 5.9/10
Description:
Song Count: 11
Duration: 33 minutes, 26 seconds
Rating: 5.9/10
Description:
After a longer while without a South Korean feature on the blog, the country's vibrant pop music scene strikes once more at last with a recent release. Girl group aespa released their second album LEMONADE just over a few weeks back as of writing, featuring not only highly slick beats characteristic to the genre, but also a few big names to assist on performing the songs - Korean rapper G-DRAGON as well as well-known American music artists Becky G and Ty Dolla $ign. Described as a sort of introduction in a sense of the group's outputs, it strives to follow up on the success of the past singles that have led these girls to rise in the industry by using a similar formula.
The catchy, primarily electronic production that reels one in emphasises the different voices shining through from the four members as they aurally carry the primary character of it all. From rhythmic dance tracks with speak-singing in "SHAKIN'" and "Bite" to hip-hop influences shaking things up further in the likes of "WDA (Whole Different Animal)" and "Switchblade", both of which including the rapper guests lending their touch in them, and even a track reminiscent of rock acts, "Can't Help Myself", the segments that make up the full 33-minute experience are far from hesitant to switch up the energies and genres at play. All of this is naturally layered on a coat of gloss through the extremely polished and clean mixing and production present in every Korean pop act.
It may be difficult to see major flaws within the record simply from the given description, and it is undeniable that LEMONADE certainly has both its constants and its spurts of greatness, especially when the music dares to be properly transformative and risk-taking. That being said, this is not the case for most of the album, including quite a few of the songs that attempt to incorporate other genres and toy around, simply because the extremely form-following structure of each song and the sanding down of a lot of the potential rough edges these musical hybrids can have lead to many tracks simply not standing out enough and drowning in the mass. A lot of the changes in energy are far too subtle to notice because they are hidden underneath the thick shell of K-Pop production norms stripping any sort of non-widely appealing elements away from the songs, thereby also taking away part of their musical identity. Overall a pleasant enough listen, but a bunched-up package of missed potential and a rather shallow seeming end product of a record that could have been much more.