After a few underwhelming months, it seems as if K-pop’s comeback floodgates will burst open in October. Before that, we’re treated to a few pre-releases from artists slated to return next month. SM Entertainment’s Hearts2Hearts don’t yet have a mini or full album to their name and have presented conflicting sounds so far. The Chase and and Style couldn’t be more different from each other, making it difficult to parse just what kind of group H2H will be going forward.
Pretty Please further complicates things, though in some ways it blends both sounds together. It’s reserved in the way The Chase was, yet has moments of the buoyant joy that drove Style. More than anything, the song feels like a throwback to a different generation of SM idols. And when I say “throwback,” I mean all the way back. This light, mid-tempo R&B sound was favored by the agency’s first-gen girl groups — both the mega-successful ones and the flash-in-the-pans. In this way, Pretty Please elicits feelings of comfort. SM’s producers have always been great at layering vocals in a way that lends weight to these R&B-pop confections and that proven arrangement works wonders here.
However, the best songs of this genre also impress with timeless melodies. Pretty Please is quite nice in this department and I can see its hook growing more indelible with time, but it also feels a bit too understated. I guess this makes sense for a pre-release. The chorus works better than the verses, which pussy foot around in a way where the whole becomes less than the sum of its parts. Still, the blatant nostalgia is enough to pull the song over the line. It’ll be interesting to see what they have up their sleeves for the title track.
Hooks
8
Production
8
Longevity
8
Bias
8
RATING
8