Maybe You Could Be The One

NewJeans “Hype Boy”

There are countless songs about having a powerful crush or falling in love, and distributed among the endless variation on this theme across genres and eras you can find all the variations on this basic human experience. It’s a beautiful thing, and part of why I could never be bored with new variations. There’s always new contexts and complications, new ways of mediating experiences, new tools to communicate emotions, new angles on describing how it feels. I like the angles in “Hype Boy,” and the way the song plays around with what “hype” means through the verses and hooks. It’s hype as in hyperactive emotions, it’s hype as in hyperbolic notions about the situation, it’s hype as in this guy’s style, it’s hype as in cheering him on. The music is surprisingly low key for K-Pop and the subject matter. It’s bright and energetic, sure, but the groove is fairly mellow. There’s a cool and collected center to this that conveys a kind of certainty that you don’t always get in songs like this, which typically have some root of desperation in the face of high stakes.

Buy it from Amazon.