I (Cha Yoon Ji) tries the BoA route on “I Wish”, is betrayed by basic production

Cha Yoon Ji, who has an international unfriendly name of I, has debuted with “I Wish” featuring Tiger JK.

The sister of B1A4 member Baro, you’ve likely heard the comparisons to BoA by now, and whoever is in charge of her debut really tried to force the issue. The start of the music video is basically a recreation of the BoA’s “ID Peace B” Japanese music video, which is hilarious in the trolling sense and makes it clear that they’re aiming high.

Like there’s no way that’s a coincidence.

While netizens are getting all fussy over the “second BoA” hype, I’m definitely not upset about it. In fact, the scene could definitely use another BoA right now, so I’m hopeful that she’ll come through. The problem for Cha Yoon Ji, though, is that while BoA rode to the top of the pop music world in Asia on the back of catchy dance track after catchy dance track, “I Wish” as a song isn’t anywhere near as interesting.

Quite frankly, I just don’t understand it. WM Entertainment is great at giving lively, danceable tracks to Oh My Girl, and they’re clearly spending a lot to hype Cha Yoon Ji up as BoA, but they hand her this sparse mid-tempo with a hook that finally ups the BPM but is cut short for a post-chorus that would fit more with an indie electronic artist than a dance-pop diva. Even Tiger JK can’t save this, and that’s a disappointment because Cha Yoon Ji herself seems to be up for the challenge vocally only to be let down by whoever handed her this lemon of an instrumental.

She’s even up for it visually…

…and from what I can see of the dancing it seems like she can hold her own in that department as well. So I get the direction they’re aiming for, but we also don’t get to see it on display much either.

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Despite the debut song she was given, I get the hype around Cha Yoon Ji to an extent. It’s just that if you’re gonna solicit comparisons to BoA, at least give me the earworm dance numbers to match. This dreamy, floaty stuff doesn’t fit the image or the concept, and hopefully going forward she’s given better stuff to work with.

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‘I Dream’ Album

“I Wish” Song

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