After a year and 5 months, the iconic Epik High has returned with a brand new mini-album, Sleepless in __________, and the title track Love Drunk. Though, their absence seems to be for a much longer time period as their last stage promotion occurred back in 2014 (approximately 5 years ago). For this title track, they joined hands with Crush as a featuring artist, while IU and actress Jin Seo Yeon featured in the music video.

Love Drunk is a ballad that starts off with Crush’s delicate vocals over a simple piano instrumental. We also get a bit of Tablo towards the end of the start, just before the song picks up and adds extra elements to the instrumentation to give it a mid-tempo feel while still maintaining the stillness/peacefulness from the start. I find the piano start was very profound for something so little and it works well with Crush and Tablo. But the song kicks up to allow for the rapping of Tablo and Mithra Jin to come into play and they leave us with impactful sequences. While this is usually the case when it comes to Epik High’s ballads, I liked how they didn’t disturb the peaceful atmosphere with their deep tones. My personal favourite part of the song has to be Tablo’s bridge, which I think sets the tone of the song. If you don’t understand Korean in any way, the bridge is a clear taste to the emotional side of the song (The song is all about the first hard breakup and the feelings you may have). It isn’t in a heart-wrenching way, however. The stillness I mentioned previously makes this ballad more powerful and heartbreaking.

The music video, as mentioned previously features IU (who plays the student) and Jin Seo Yeon (the teacher). Seo Yeon seems to be the type of person who is cold and doesn’t want to teach anyone due to her strict standards. IU, on the other hand, wants to be trained by her. At the start of the video, IU is caught spying on Seo Yeon and they have a fight. No one is victorious in this fight as most likely Seo Yeon fought to scare IU away and IU was not able to overpower her. This causes IU to become upset and she screams, attracting the attention of Seo Yeon and breaking a few barrels of water. Intrigued, Seo Yeon starts teaching IU. And during one of these teaching moments (I assume – or maybe it was an actual fight), IU landed a punch which assumingly kills Seo Yeon. This plagues IU’s mind and leaves her devastated, as seen at the end. Rather than playing with a romantic relationship, the director chose a role model based relationship, as this would be the first relationships we, as people, would have. And the loss of this role model would be extremely devastating to us. Overall, I thought it was a well thought out video. The martial arts does throw you off a bit but the underlying plotline makes sense with the lyrics.

Song – 8/10
Music Video 10/10
Overall Rating – 8.8/10