Track Overview: Seventeen – Thunder

Seventeen are celebrating an enormous ten yr anniversary right now. They had been widespread proper out of the gate, however few may have predicted simply how huge they’ve change into. I bear in mind staying up very late to observe the premiere of their first music video (the ebullient Adore U) ten years in the past, however I’ve grown extra distant from their music lately. New single Thunder matches strongly inside my EDM-loving wheelhouse, however misses the prospect to measure as much as their greatest work.

I’m so joyful to listen to large membership beats again in Okay-pop. This power has been missed and if it takes a gaggle as influential as Seventeen to totally re-popularize it, I’m grateful for his or her service. Nevertheless, songs like Thunder and aespa’s 2024 hit Whiplash are lacking an important factor: The place’s the melody? As somebody who listens to a ton of dance music, I do know simply how simply this style can change into faceless and generic. That’s normally because of a scarcity of melodic heft. I’m a grasping listener. I need large dancefloor power and an equally large refrain.

On this regard, Thunder sputters. It doesn’t really feel like a lot of a track in any respect. As a substitute, a collection of spoken catchphrases populate the thumping instrumental. For a observe with such persistently excessive power, all the things is unusually flat. That is most blatant throughout the hook, which opts to retreat right into a minimalist, spelled-out repetition of the title accented by a whistled loop and adopted by a haphazard melodic coda that largely spins its wheels. For such a giant membership observe, the manufacturing is oddly muzzled as properly. The EQ of the combination feels very hesitant, as if there’s a full terabyte of information compelled to stuff itself right into a tiny 32gb flash drive. The place’s the scope and ambition? And with no track construction that permits for construct and climax, Thunder ends with out ceremony. It’s bizarre. On paper, I needs to be dropping my thoughts over this track. In actuality, it barely leaves an impression.

Grade: C