Is “She Is” any good? “She Is” is!
[Video][Website]
[7.20]
Alfred Soto: Of course it sounds like the former SHINee lead singer’s saying “bullshit,” the ideal accompaniment to a stop-start rhythm. Surrounded by breathy harmonies and bits of slapped bass, Jonghyun insists on that hook, over and over.
[7]
Tim de Reuse: The electrohouse parlor tricks on display here are old as hell, but, hey, there’s a reason this stuff has stuck around for so long. Here everything is produced to a ludicrous, glossy mirror shine, chopped into crisp, clever ear-candy edges. Its production succeeds by letting the vocals ride on the skeleton of an engaging chord progression, eschewing dramatic waves of tension and release for a single unbroken groove that just kind of strides confidently all the way through. The make-or-break on this one is whether or not you get tired of that breathy “OH!-she-is” that starts off half the lines in the song. Frankly, I think it’s absolute genius.
[8]
Iain Mew: A slick vehicle for providing the chance to repeatedly exclaim “oh shiz!” but not really. It’s a sign of how well constructed it is that the question of what the point is almost, almost doesn’t overtake it.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: It has been a good year for K-pop songs taking heavy cues from the sea of SoundCloud, highlighted earlier this year by “Overcome” and “Fly.” Now comes “She Is,” opening with big synth washes, featuring an impressive attention to detail (water drop sounds!) and some very welcome bass. And Jonghyun manages to turn all of these signifiers into a coherent and overall fun song.
[7]
Sabina Tang: Elastic and summery, like sheer color-block nylons, or an “m-flo loves x” single from nigh a decade back (e.g. “Loop In My Heart”).
[7]
Will Rivitz: While it’s impossible to argue this isn’t a nearly note-for-note ripoff of about half of Lido’s catalogue, there’s a reason that producer is one of the most sought-after in the biz today. The video’s food-coloring palate fits the tobogganing organ chords and boomerang bass, roughly equivalent to a giant hunk of cotton candy in its effervescence, weightlessness, and (after a while) sickly stickiness. It’s a lightweight, quick-moving pop song, and all things considered that’s not the worst thing in the world.
[7]
David Moore: Staggering sweep synths settle into to lite funk; smooth, blank male K-pop vocals turn from bug to feature by piling on harmonies. Lurches haltingly before melting into a big smile, like a toddler surprising himself with a bout of hiccups and then bursting into laughter — which is to say my son would approve of this one.
[7]
Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Gooey synth-funk that zig-zags the line between laid-back and intense, with jazzy guitars adding class to the syncopation and an even classier Jonghyun going savage with the triplets in the second verse. With all these ingredients incorporated so tightly, why does it still feel like the track’s about to burst into a bigger, funkier groove that never arrives? I wanted that big jump.
[7]
Juana Giaimo: When I hear “She Is,” I imagine a boy enumerating all the things he likes about a girl he has just met. He knows his words will never be enough to describe her completely, but he can’t avoid singing about her. This sugary tone is contrasted with Jonghyun’s confidence. He casually shifts from a a perfect falsetto to precise rapped lines, building sensual tension to soon relax the atmosphere with a warm melody. Because he also knows that the girl is sighing, “He is”.
[8]
Adaora Ede: For every K-pop song, there is an exact counterpart. The apparition doesn’t have to be a perfect copy of the original song, but there will be the slightest glimmer in your mind of perhaps some KARA b-side from 2009. Even as a track made up entirely of bells-and-whistles, “She Is” stands alone. There’s nothing like it. “She Is” is synthy without sounding stiff; its chorus sounds paeanic but wholly modern. Stylistically, one can easily identify why Jonghyun has been labeled the supreme in the new wave of idols-turned-songwriters because his ideas are sonically stronger than the typical Rachel Platten-lite or nu metal revival we get from most of our self-proclaimed creatives. Nonetheless, this is no sort of perfect pop package; you’re going to have to do a lot of unwrapping. It starts out as such a double creeper-sleeper jam because you will struggle to even remember the tune by the second listen, but then you’ll remember just how surreal it is to be hearing a dance breakdown in the middle of a neo-soul funk jam and hit that damn play button again. But at this point, so much of the lyricism of this song has filtered into my daily life that I will actually excuse the contrived hip hop bridge. And then I realize why it doesn’t sound like anything else: this song is the culmination of nit-picky emulation. You know that.
[9]