It has been 3 years since the release of Hyorin’s solo debut album, where she promoted One Way Love. After 3 years, she has returned with a brand new mini-album, It’s Me, which features the main title track, Paradise. Along with Paradise, she released 2 pre-releases: Love Like This (featuring DOK2) and One Step (featuring Jay Park). She also collaborated with Jooheon from Monsta X on another track on the album.

I find the track quite underwhelming. It isn’t terrible. It may sound stupid, but since Hyorin has amazing vocals, I am still waiting for that one track that blows us all away. This track, plus her previous solo track have not done that yet, and that disappoints me. Out of all the songs that I say the singers are holding back, this song probably will top that list. Some parts sound good with her voice, but she needed to do a little more towards the end. Capping the song with more ad-libs (but not overdoing it) could have made the track a little better. What we have here is good, but sounds limited and tame. Honestly, the song, despite being catchy, felt dull and repetitive. The Latin-inspired instrumental remained the same throughout (minus the dance break) and that dulled the song quite a bit. The producers managed to change it up quite nicely at the bridge with the beat drop (which was quite unexpected, but I like it) but they just went back to original beat straight away and that didn’t captivate me or give it that wow factor. Also the “Yeah, I’m different, Uh, huh, my temperature is different” (during the chorus) sounds forced and quite uncomfortable. Overall, disappointed with the track.

The music video was okay. There wasn’t much to it, besides Hyorin being sexy and dancing. Some of the sets look amazing. I know I have said that I dislike the projections that appear in the video in the past. But the projections here were pretty good. That sets plus a few others gave the video a very nice elegant and classy feel. Some of the other sets, like the shower one, were hideous in my eyes. And they didn’t show a classy or elegant side. I have to agree with a few comments on YouTube, but the stylist this time didn’t do a good job. As I said in the past, I have a hideous fashion sense, but even some things in the video have me going ‘huh?’.

The choreography looks boring and uninventive. There is also a very uncomfortable look that she has while performing the song. I don’t know if she is uncomfortable with singing the song, dancing to it or performing just by herself after so long, but that did affect the performance for me.

Rating – 4.5/10