One of the more recent debuts is by A2O SOUL, who kicked off their careers a month ago with their pre-release single SUPERSTAR. You might know them as the male counterparts of A2O LITE (the review of their debut track is scheduled for later today). A2O SOUL is under A2O Entertainment (the company Lee Soo Man founded after leaving SM Entertainment, which he also founded) and consists of 15 members (MOON, SORA, SEOHA, TEO, GAKU, JUNE, HANSUNG, LUCIEN, SEE-ONE, ALURE, TAI, SONO, ZAI, AYDEN, and ZET).
When SUPERSTAR comes on, I find myself gliding along with the song. I also find the track to be ethereal and atmospheric. I put this down to SUPERSTAR‘s synthwave approach, with the 1980s synthesiser playing a dominant role in the background. It also adds pleasant detailing to enjoy. The song is also ultra smooth, which I attribute to the melodies and its vocal-forward nature. The chorus also has a dreamy character, which makes SUPERSTAR’s centrepiece so captivating. But while SUPERSTAR‘s vocals get a lot of praise from me, it is also where I have my biggest problem with the song. The members all sound the same, which makes me feel like the producers and the group played it very safe. I wish we’d heard more individuality from the members, which could have added other appealing elements to SUPERSTAR.
SUPERSTAR speaks to the idea of shining bright as a “superstar”, capturing youthful ambition, energy, and the spark leading up to debut. With that in mind, and since this is a pre-release, it makes sense for the music video to focus on the journey leading up to their debut, including the struggles of being a trainee and the lifelong friendships they are making along the way. We see the members take as many opportunities as possible to practice, whilst also hanging out with each other. The ending focuses on their desire to be on stage and that they’re literally becoming stars. I liked the idea of the playground as the main set, representing their youth. But I thought the CGI scenes of the members in the sky and amongst fireworks were quite cheesy.
I quite liked SUPERSTAR’s performance. It carries forth that smoothness that I mentioned about the song, and it was great to see the performance polished through synchronisation, a tough feat for a 15-member group. It was also good to see the performance broken up into units, which made the whole performance much more approachable than having 15 members perform constantly.
Song – 9/10
Music Video – 8/10
Performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 8.7/10
