[Review] HIGH4 & IU - Not Spring, Love, or Cherry Blossoms

Ballad and IU sounds like a sweet deal to me, and with rookie group HIGH4 making their debut, supposedly with a few members knowing IU, sounds like a good recipe for a tasty ballad.

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Vocals: 9 / 10

Gotta hand it to HIGH4 and their management. If you’re gonna debut with a ballad, enlisting the help of IU is pretty genius. IU is one of the premier ballad masters with her sweet voice, and is perfect for the song and lyrics. On the flipside, the male voices from Myunghan and Sunggu provide rich lower ranges that provide a simply delightful combination with IU’s airy high notes. I have no other words. Absolutely. Delightful. The lone mark off is due to a lack of anything that stands out and says “Wow” which might be expected towards the end. Still, the phrase “Not spring, love, or cherry blossoms” has never sounded sweeter.

Appearance: 7 / 10

IU looks sweet, adorable, pretty, etc. As always. She is simply immune to aging, an ability others in the industry also share. I have no problems with the looks of HIGH4, and in fact I could instantly discern which members were the rappers through looks alone, but what’s up with the highlights / coloured hair? Just seems they chose random colours and the whole process is questionable. Since their debut song of choice was a ballad, having bright colourful hair seems out of place and they look very goofy.

Dance: ? / 10

Um. I guess there was something of a dance at the end. I’m not weighing this at all, of course, as there was as little choreography as there was actual dancing shown in the MV.

Rap: 4 / 10

Meh. I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse, but the main problem with the rapping is that it’s just out of place in this ballad. Not necessarily saying that raps have no place in ballads, because that’s not true. There are a handful of ballads with excellent execution of rapping (LeeSSang’s “Tears” and EXO’s “Baby Don’t Cry” are just 2 examples), but this falls rather flat. The voices of both Yongjun and Alex aren’t exactly the type of voice for rapping, and they remind me of BTOB’s “Ilhoon” at best, with slight nasal tones. Despite the already swayed opinions, I think the rapping pair could do better with a different type of song.

Music Video: 6 / 10

Okay, so I admit the set was cute, and allowed for some fun “interactions”, if you will. The rapping members in the car, heh. Other than that though, there’s not much going for this video. For a song about couples and “love, spring, and cherry blossoms”, I only saw the cherry blossoms (which, might I add looked like snow at some points). There were no other couples to be looked at or sought after, and I never thought that the set could be considered in springtime. Alright, I guess.

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Overall: 66 / 100

That rap, man. Absolutely murdered this score. Ignoring that, this ballad is very sweet. The mesh of voices between IU and HIGH4 is quite divine, and since the song is a ballad, everything is even better / more amplified. Just goes to show how much weight one category will pull, and more importantly how execution of rapping can be so crucial.