Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Nine Muses are back with “Sleepless Night“, and despite my general excitement over them and a solid amount of hype, the lead track is a letdown because it can’t pick one thing or the other.
“Sleepless Night” starts with a nice subdued instrumental that appears to be building to something, but starting with the second verse the volume of the instrumental and one echoing effect in particular completely overwhelms their light, airy vocals. Also, whatever the verses were building to is never actually realized, and it takes you a while to even remember there is a chorus at all in this.
“Sleepless Night” seemed to me like the song wanted to be a sultry, seductive track with a subdued sound and light vocals, but it couldn’t quite fight off the uptempo elements of a standard Korean pop song that wanted to creep in, and as a result it ends up in an awkward middle ground that doesn’t quite work either way.
Oh well, at least the music video was nice.
Now watch this be their breakout hit or something.
