Last week, EPEX teased their new album with pre-release Picasso — a track so confrontational and unpleasant that it seemed to put a curse on the entire industry. Seriously, every new song released in its wake has struggled to reach the high quality of July’s first half! Now, the group is grateful for our collective tears with their new title track Grateful To Tears (눈물나게 고마워) — or at least, that’s the wild conspiracy theory I’m taking from it.
Grateful To Tears is a complete one eighty from Picasso‘s brash assault. The song catches EPEX in soft rock mode, a style that’s worked well for them before. This is a tried-and-true boy group formula that’s been especially popular this year. Do it well and you’ve got a stirring, emotional highlight. Otherwise, this style threatens to become quite generic. Though Grateful To Tears is well-written and performed, I fear it leans closer to the latter.
With a song this straightforward, I’m looking for something that stands out as idiosyncratic to the group. This could be found in many ways, from songwriting and production to the execution from the idols themselves. Try as I might, I can’t hear this in Grateful To Tears. The song goes down easy, offering a jolt of energy in the right places and enough emotive crooning to choreograph an effective dance to. But the lack of anything unique makes this track much less memorable than it should be — especially when stacked against similar efforts. File this under: pleasant, but very inessential.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 7 |
| Longevity | 8 |
| Bias | 7 |
| RATING | 7.5 |
