Yeri (Red Velvet) – KPOPREVIEWED

As mentioned previously, I am (extremely) slowly catching up on reviews from last week. Due to another week of a high workload, I predict that catching up on reviews for the past two weeks may lead onto the next week. But that is an issue to be dealt with then. Today, I have picked Yeri’s first solo single to be the main focus. Dear Diary was released last week on Thursday and is also part of the SM Station series. The track is quite special as it is self-composed by Yeri herself. that it was self-composed by herself. We also last saw Yeri as a solo artist in her collaboration, Hair In The Air, with members of NCT Dream for the Trolls show.

Dear Diary is an acoustic ballad that I find fitting for a nice day. But it isn’t a ballad that I am falling for. I find it a bit plain for my liking and hence why I haven’t been enjoying it as much. The song has a nice piano and guitar combination, keeping true to its acoustic description throughout the entire track. I also do think the song did a nice job of showing off her vocals. We don’t see much opportunity for her to do so in the Red Velvet title tracks. so it is quite nice to hear a Yeri solo track. I did like the airy sound she brought to the background vocals, which I thought was both nice and gave a flowy feel to the song. To me, the song is very straight forward and doesn’t have much to really create a cause for me to stay. I would be happy to listen to the song if it appeared on my playlist, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to really find and play it.

The music video is slightly better. I really like the simplicity of the music video and how this flowed to even the effects of the video. For example, I liked the snapshots of her footage appearing throughout the video. But rather than flashbacks or some fancy transition, they are just layered on top of the main scene as rectangles. There was no editing of colours or borders. Just straight forward footage on one another. I also enjoyed the lighting of the video. Really gave the song a homely feel. There was some dryness to the video which may have stemmed from the song. But overall, I thought it was a nice video to still watch.

Song – 5/10
Music Video – 7/10
Overall Rating – 5.8/10

Both Red Velvet and NCT are nominated in this year’s KPOPREVIEWED Awards. Voting is underway and if you haven’t voted yet, click here to do so now!

For this week’s SM Station release, Yeri (from Red Velvet) and Renjun, Jeno and Jaemin (from NCT) join hands together for the special release of Hair In The Air, which is the main theme song for the new television series – Trolls: The Beat Goes On. The song features on a special OST album for the show and the album also contains a second track, Best Day Ever, featuring Haechan, Chenle and Jisung (from NCT as well). But we are here for Hair In The Air, so let’s get going.

Hair In The Air goes for a fun-filled and vibrant sound, suiting the animated show it will represent in South Korea. It has this positivity atmosphere that makes you want to smile and dance to. The pop instrumental for the song was consistent (in a good way) and gave the song that fun factor which I have already mentioned. It is super addictive so I can see it being used as a children’s show theme song. Yeri and Renjun take cares of the vocals in the song, while Jeno and Jaemin rap in the song. And I personally enjoyed both the vocals and raps in the song as they both add some flavour and textures to the song. It may just be a standard song to some but I thoroughly enjoyed its lightheartedness.

Like the song, the video is pretty much a lighthearted video. Not really meant to be taken seriously. Since it was for Trolls, I had expected some sort of Trolls animation throughout it. But instead, we have a party themed video with Yeri and the 3 featuring members from NCT. But it seems that this party is all in the book that Yeri is reading. There is a small bit of choreography for the video to compliment the fun style of the video. Rather simple but I enjoyed it.

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