Released April 21, 2017
Track Listing
- Dlwlrma
- Palette featuring G-Dragon
- Ending Scene
- Can’t Love You Anymore featuring Oh Hyuk
- Jam Jam
- Black Out
- Full Stop
- Through The Night
- Love Alone
- Dear Name
Review
I champion IU’s music here on Selective Hearing. Her catalogue is filled with rich and diverse sounds, plus her voice is the best, if not, one of the best in the game right now. If that wasn’t enough, she’s taken more control over the lyrics in her songs in the same time period.
All this is to say that IU has been firing on all cylinders for a while now. So when the teasers for Palette started coming out, I stayed patient. When CHAT-SHIRE came out in 2015, I noted in the review that those teasers had me worried she plateaued, but when Twenty-Three dropped, it proved that she didn’t. The roll-out for this was similar, so I waited to see what she had in store for us.
Through The Night is a cute, solid ballad. I also mentioned in the CHAT-SHIRE review that I’m done with IU doing ballads. She’s proven she can do great ones, but I want to hear something different. It is the first song released; I chalked this up as a palate cleanser for us and a warm-up for IU.
Then the collaboration with Oh Hyuk gets released. Now we are cooking. Can’t Love You Anymore is a smooth R&B track that brings out more of IU’s sultry side, and I think her voice pairs with Oh Hyuk’s voice well. R&B isn’t a new or inventive genre for IU to tackle, but it’s at least showing a willingness to mix up the sounds on this album.
She continues it with the title track. It’s a calmer, more reserved IU. From IU’s demeanour, and the production, to G-Dragon’s voice, it all works. Besides, G-Dragon matches his verse to respond to IU’s lyrics. Speaking of IU’s lyrics, keep this in mind. We will revisit them later.
If this were going to be an R&B album, that would not be a problem for me. But IU is an artist in every sense of the word, so she was bound to change it up on us. Jam Jam is one of the best songs on the album and might even be one of her best songs, period.
She jumps into the electropop lane and crushes it. In the same way, Twenty-Three alleviated any worries I had going to CHAT-SHIRE; Jam Jam did that for me here. While it’s not a perfect one-to-one comparison, the duo Phantogram came to mind on my first listen, and it hasn’t gone away. Also important to note that this might be the most suggestive IU has ever been.
It’s apt that IU has a song called Full Stop cause the momentum of the album slows down at that point. The last four songs of the album are all ballads. I wondered if spreading out the ballads across the album would help, but Ending Scene makes ballads half the album, so a better distribution wouldn’t help.
If you’re looking for more upbeat things, then Palette and Can’t Love You Anymore might not be your thing, either. After multiple listens, I got curious and tried to figure out why she went in this direction. So I delved into the lyrics.
In the ballads, IU is singing about different stages of love: love gained, love lost, and reminiscing about the good times. Perhaps she has been thinking about her love life, and it had her in this mood, which is perfectly valid to express in music. I accept I’m not as receptive to ballads as I used to be. But the translated lyrics for Palette came out, and they caught my eye. Here are some screenshots of the video with the lyrics.
Stemming back to Last Fantasy, IU gives us a glimpse of where she was in her life when the music was released. From those screenshots, it appears that IU has become more comfortable about who she is as a musician and a person. The translations could be better but look at those lines again.
I think now I know who I am a little
It’s strange, but I like that it’s easy these days
I got this. I’m truly fine.
She’s content. She put five ballads on the album cause she wanted to, but it’s more than that. She does not need to push the envelope and actively tries to wow us. I can’t criticize IU for being honest. I wouldn’t say I like the direction, but I like that she’s honest with us. That I can accept, but it’s nagging that she has songs like Jam Jam, Black Out, and Can’t Love You Anymore, where her singing and songwriter skills are more utilized, yet she settled for ballads for the majority of the album.
I’ll continue championing IU’s music on Selective Hearing, even if something is left to be desired.
