Review: Sunmi - Heart Burn
Sunmi is one of the most ingenuitive soloists active at the moment. Her music is provocative, clever, and musically genius. With the exception of last year's underwhelming 1/6 EP, her music has always been a highlight within its release window, peaking with 2018's incredible Heroine, one of the best songs of the 2010s for sure.
Heart Burn is her latest single, and sees her provide a twist on something old as usual. This time she twists the femme-fetale trope with a little bit of summery energy, and as with almost all Sunmi songs, and a little bit of introspective, sorrowful atmosphere. This is a trademark of Sunmi's music (sometimes liberally titled "Sunmi-Pop"), and she has the vocals to provide the ample emotion required for many of her songs, including Heart Burn.
Unfortunately, Heart Burn never grows into one of her many stone-cold classics. Not much of that is the song's fault, its structure supports something a little bit more melancholy and minuscule than dramatic and heartbreaking. This is why I find its comparison to 2020's Pporapippam a little bit of a misnomer. The songs are clearly meant to be taken together, but this comparison only makes me appreciate the song of the velvet night more.
The light summery synths are clearly Heart Burn's highlights, after Sunmi herself, of course. Their mixing with Sunmi's voice in the chorus is surprisingly strong, and I also love the separate synths in the verses, playing call-and-response with Sunmi's voice, it adds quite a lot of texture.
Despite all of its successes, Heart Burn is limited by limited ambition and melody. In the end, it is a strong, if unessential, entry into Sunmi's discography.
Oof, this is a high 8 for me because I'm a sucker for this type of sound 🤧 At least Sunmi has her own brand now, you know immediately it's her song when you hear it.
ReplyDeleteI mean, this song actually objectively is more like an 8.25, and I have played it thus. However, this is Sunmi, she is judged by her own, incredible, standards. And yeah, with the exception of YCSWU, I think I could definitely tell every song was by Sunmi even without her voice. The definition of consistent!
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