01. Out of Love
02. Take Me Now
03. Lose
04. 가면
05. 너에게 물들어
06. Stand By Me
07. Paparazzi
08. Wonderful Life
09. We Are…
I believe that you guys should know by now that I've hinted numerous times that i'm no longer a huge kpop fan. however, i still check for the acts that I grew up listening to such as Shinhwa. FTISLAND is also apart of that group of kpop(?) artists i still mess with along with a few new acts. I can safely say that these boys have had my rocking all through my middle school and high school years. They started going back and forth to Japan and I began supporting their music releases there as well. Now here we are in the present with an FTISLAND fresh from Japan with a new Korean album "Where's the truth?"
The fact that they decided to name the album this is really funny because Ive been wondering where was the truth in FTISLAND's music for a little while now. Don't get me wrong, they have had some amazing releases in the past few years..... but that was mostly in Japan. Its not secret to anyone that this band use to be extremely popular in Korea but time is never easy on people in the industry especially when you want to do music that speaks to YOU and not just the masses. FTISLAND started their career as mostly a ballad pop rock group that played it pretty safe with their music choices. Each boy is easy on the eyes and their songs spoke mostly to teenage girls around the ages of 15 to 19. They have shown foreshadowing signs that the change of direction in their music was coming someday with songs like "Girls don't know"(여자는 몰라) and "Bad Women"(나쁜 여자야 )but these songs were dime a dozen. They probably had to beg their record label to even include songs like these because they are pointing the finger at the same girls who were consuming their music. That lyric change during the last part of bad women is also not slick. I guess they didn't want female listeners to feel totally attacked.
"Where is the truth" is FTISLAND saying fuck it all, lets just make the music we want to make." They are still well known in South Korea but i don't think its nowhere near the popularity they use to have. The boys have shown signs for awhile that they wanted to switch their sound but Korea is not about the rock and roll life in the mainstream so they migrated to Japan where they gained a good following doing the music they wanted to do. This album is just a Korean version of the musical style they were doing in japan. I was actually surprised at the amount of English thats used in each song on the album. The structure of the choruses and the english combined together give the songs a slightly western touch. This isn't a bad thing as most modern Korean music is influenced by its western counterpart and you wouldn't have one without the other. "Take me now" is just so hard hitting and edge that I'm not sure mainstream Korean audiences can take this type of sound. They probably won't win on music shows but that's ok. You get coolness points for me for being true to yourselves and not a sellout. Songs like "Out of love" and "Stand By me" tell the story of girls who have done a guy wrong when he has done everything to keep the relationship stable. you can't go wrong with the sounds the boys produce to make a solid rock record. Their guitar and drum playing has advanced so much that I almost thought they bundling up and changed. At a lot of times while listening, I found myself singling along and heading banging to the beat. "Paparazzi" catchy cuteness proves that their pop side is not completely dead but the song goes along with the album smoothly. Hongki is one of the best frontmans a band could ask for. His voice contains a range that is fit for not just one type of music. One of the charms of this band is that they have such a strong vocalist that's sings a music genre opposite what people would think his voice would be associated with. What type of english classes was this boy taking over in Japan?? His english pronunciation is near perfect. I'm not sure how good his speaking is but he was singing in english like he was fluent. The vocal tones of his voice contain a raspy resonance in his midrange and then when this dude really lets his voce rip you hear vibrato for days. WE ALSO CAN'T FORGET ABOUT JAEJIN!!! Thats my boy and he still be holding it down with his backup vocals. He has a very nice voice of his own.
FTISLAND's 6th album is their freedom of expression to put out the type of music they want to. We need more brave artists in the Korean music industry like these boys who don't care so much about winning music shows, and chart positions. We as humans have to realize that popularity doesn't last forever and there will always be some other new group that people might say is better. The important thing is to keep making music for the fans that will love you because it's you and not your popularity. Something to think about.
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