Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
G-Friend has had an incredible run of quality releases with their schoolgirl trilogy and then “Navillera” and “Fingertip“, but they’ve finally disappointed a bit with their most recent comeback, “Love Whisper“.
“Love Whisper” was immediately interesting to me, as it seemed to throwback to first-generation K-pop group sounds for the verses and also to their powerful, but with a little less cheese and a little more polish. Also, the choreography is outstanding as usual and the music video sets the atmosphere well for the track.
But unlike their previous releases, which basically always included a catchy hook, “Love Whisper” is G-Friend’s first that just lacks that addictive quality and has a rather basic chorus. This is eventually compounded as the verses don’t necessarily grow as the song trudges along, so there’s also nothing to make me think it’ll be fixed with time and repeated listens.
Furthermore, while I don’t mind the return to the powerful innocence concept, it does feel like it kind of discards the progress they were making with “Navillera” and “Fingertip”. Of course, K-pop is a business and “Fingertip” was their least popular release, so maybe I should’ve seen this coming, but they seemed to have a solid idea of the direction they wanted to go in, but now seem rather lost chasing past glory or something.
Thankfully, there’s nothing wrong with G-Friend as a group, nor does their future seem in doubt, so one just has to hope that they find their direction again with the next release.
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