ILLIT – Magnetic
A K-pop debut that we’re quite drawn to…
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[7.15]
Iain Mew: It’s 2024, of course the single picked from their EP picked is the song with the most candied music-box elements. The song isn’t as fully committed to replicating that sound as the tentative spoken word intro suggests, which means its sweetness is diluted, but the other elements in the mixture work with it. The bass stomping forward and the 2010s stuttered “you you you”s are a great alternative, and the 16-bit swoops and pops tie it all together with a fizz.
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TA Inskeep: This smart K-pop groove has the feel of ’80s first-wave electro without actually sounding like it. I don’t love the sound effect-sounding stuff, but “Magnetic”‘s airiness (especially ILLIT’s vocals) counterbalances its rubbery bassline nicely.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Its twitchy pulse and winking vocals are a tonic after the relationship psychobabble of their American contemporaries.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: Super eclectic. I’m very proud of Martin KOR. For a first credit, he made his mark; he should have more than one credit.
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Isabel Cole: A pleasantly summery little bit of froth; I like the video game twinkles that pop up every now and then.
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Taylor Alatorre: Nobody wants an entire genre, even the most vertically integrated of genres, to be flattened into an arms race pursuit of weaponized competence. But there’s a bit of a collective action problem, in that it’s very hard to object to any single display of that weaponized competence. The besotted bits of spoken word that bookend “Magnetic” are like the blurb on the back of a bag of potato chips, touting its recipe’s lovingly handmade origins and capped off with the inkjet signature of the company’s long-dead, possibly apocryphal founder. The chips taste good.
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Katherine St. Asaph: Synth and squelch and pneumatic charm, engineered to precise specs.
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Ian Mathers: None of the alerts from my phone or computer (personal or work) sound much at all like that notification-ass effect they use here, and yet I have found myself reflexively checking to see whether someone’s trying to get a hold of me at least 3-4 times each time I’ve played “Magnetic.” I can’t decide if it’s genius or maddening or both.
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Michael Hong: ILLIT make low-key proclamations: “you’re! my! crush!” exclaimed, but only on paper; “we’re magnetized, I admit it,” confessed, but not meant to be heard. “Magnetic” is all glittery synths and the word “you” transformed into a dial-tone sound effect, toeing the line between fantasy and reality in regards to a crush, but perhaps that’s what makes it so addictive.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Pretty easy to pin down everything here: a spoken intro reminscent of vintage Apink, a vocal melody that points to K-pop’s undying love for “My Boo,” the sort of half-time breakdown that TWICE has been doing since “Likey,” a diaphanous atmosphere that screams NewJeans, bed squeaks that are decidedly unsexy, and pretty synth flourishes and vocal manipulations that are classic “K-pop does J-pop” a la Red Velvet’s “Russian Roulette.” It’s a summation of girlish K-pop throughout the past 15 years made palatable for the genre’s 5th gen.
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Leah Isobel: The TWICE-ification of NewJeans — more garishly obvious, with a thicker candy shell that messes with the textural balance. Still tasty, but less subtle.
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Kayla Beardslee: Everything is NewJeans — except it’s also not, Min Hee Jin, stop making your delusions everyone else’s problem. Trend shifts happen when a force builds up in the background without people noticing, until someone influential who’s great at reading the room happens to give it a push that bursts the damn, and suddenly everyone is swimming together in the changed current. In the last few months, the dam has burst on the 5th generation of K-pop, and “Magnetic” may well have been the song that caused it. I don’t think even ILLIT’s company expected their level of breakout success: it seems like K-pop listeners were waiting for a release like “Magnetic” without even knowing it, and when it finally came along, it was so perfectly primed for the current moment that we had no choice but to be pulled in. What set the stage for ILLIT wasn’t one group so genius and unique that their tactics simultaneously influence everything yet cannot be replicated, but a combination of releases from multiple big names over several years that gradually pushed K-pop in a new direction. First, in late 2021, IVE debuted to instant massive success with a concept that was essentially “What if we just made good pop music without any gimmicks?” Then NewJeans picked up that same idea and debuted in summer 2022 to even more unprecedented success, causing an instant aesthetic reset in K-pop from the boldness and busy-ness of most leading 4th gen groups back to mellowness, warmth, and simplicity. Between mid-2023 and early 2024, Zerobaseone, RIIZE, and TWS debuted, which was the first time in several years that multiple high-profile boy groups debuted in quick succession. All three hit it off with breezy debut singles about letting boys have fun and be earnest instead of acting cool. (Think about the dorky confessions and bright synths of TWS’s “Plot Twist” next to to the shouted chorus and crunchy hip-hop textures of NCT 127’s “Kick It.”) Then, in the span of three days at the end of this March, five different K-pop related girl groups debuted with singles that ranged from mellow candy-colored pop to tight electropop to chill pop-R&B to, finally, the ILLIT track we’re actually reviewing. Most 4th gen K-pop singles are distinguished by a density of ideas and hugeness of sound that match the expanding size of the global K-pop audience in the late 2010s to early 2020s — the glut of Blackpink-inspired girl crush comebacks, the boy groups doing a million loud hip-hop and electronic songs, tons of rapping regardless of how good they are at it, deliberately disjointed song sections — but the flood of girl group debuts in the last week of March focused first and foremost on constructing a solid pop beat, then layering relaxed, approachable vocals over it with a topline that does just enough to keep the listener interested. (If you’re asking, “Is this too slight, or is it actually good?” then it’s probably on trend.) Compare these to the energy and density of “Dalla Dalla,” “Savage,” “Tomboy,” or “Panorama,” and you’re in two completely different worlds. This is how we ended up with “Magnetic,” which is nowhere near the most musically ambitious or complex track of the year, and certainly not the most vocally interesting, but is a gently glowing sign that we’ve transitioned into a new generation of K-pop that values entirely different aesthetics. It’s also so supernaturally catchy that it sounds like it was created in a lab: not in a “Haha K-pop is a product” kind of way, but like I think they actually had test tubes with different samples of the hooks sitting around in the HYBE building, and they probably tested them on animals to find the most insidiously catchy ones. (Like, does Lauren Aquilina have a dog who listens as she writes?) “Magnetic” is the biggest K-pop bop of the year so far, and yet it feels so small and accessible due to the incredible economy of its tight, groovy production and its multitude of hooks, which are embedded not just in the lyrics but also the rhythm of the instrumental against the vocals and the careful negative space placed throughout. (Oh! beat My! beat Gosh!) ILLIT are balanced on the crest of the wave as K-pop moves into a new generation, from the larger-than-life ambitions of the 4th gen to the idol-next-door simplicity of the 5th. They didn’t set the wave in motion, but they caught it just early enough to have a pivotal role in its shaping. “Magnetic” is perfectly constructed and historically significant, but it’s also cute and so much fun: I can’t imagine hating a song as endearing as this. Wait… why do I hear boss battle music?
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Reader average: [7.2] (5 votes)