Given Big Hit’s track record, my expectations for new boy group CORTIS were high. Sadly, I haven’t been able to connect with any of their pre-release material. If I ignore the English lyrics of What You Want I can almost appreciate its 90s stoner rock pastiche, but songs like GO! leave me completely cold. Now, the guys are back with title track FaSHioN alongside their debut album and I think it’s simply time for me to admit defeat.
I am far from being part of Gen Z (MZ?), so maybe we’ve reached the point where age becomes an immovable wall between me and a track like FaSHioN. Speaking purely from my perspective, I don’t see the appeal of this song at all. It’s repetitive, sonically ugly and slathered in godawful vocal effects. Its melodic range is flat, its percussion is tinny and monotonous and the performance feels like it’s trying so hard to convince listeners of CORTIS’s badassery. (And, hasn’t ENHYPEN already recorded this song several times over?)
If you enjoy FaSHioN, you might be better off not reading this review at all. And if CORTIS continue down this musical path, future reviews might also be difficult. I try to be as open-minded as I can but everyone has their kryptonite and I find this to be the cheesiest, most sophomoric debut roll-out I’ve ever seen for a major K-pop artist. The empathetic side of me wants to praise FaSHioN for its unrelenting apocalyptic energy. In fact, much of my beloved Gen 1 H.O.T and Shinhwa songs were built upon a similar sense of impending doom. However, those were better and more fully-formed songs with interesting commentary and diverse sound palettes. God help us (ie: me) if the sound of FaSHioN somehow catches fire and becomes the norm for the industry.
| Hooks | 4 |
| Production | 4 |
| Longevity | 4 |
| Bias | 1 |
| RATING | 3.25 |
