Hold on a Sec

Flu from the album "Lilac" by K-pop megastar IU (Lee Ji-eun) is three minutes of weightless dynamic pop sugar that will send you flying with the birds up to hi-fi tweeter heaven. More on the aviary later, but suffice it to say, I love when I'm listening to music in two-channel stereo and start looking around for speakers around and above me that I know damn well are not there. This is my current tweeter test track. It's a lot of fun on a good set of cans and straight-up sorcery from a well-set-up pair of loudspeakers.

Let's get this out of the way; I know just about zero about K-pop. I share a K-pop playlist with one of my kids, and I'm telling y'all it is WILD in there. The genre is dominated by group acts raised from (almost) birth and molded into polished squads of audio-visual-entertainment-product Spartan warriors that all dance, sing, rap, model, and act with varying degrees of success.

The production and arrangements are usually slick, often overly so for my taste. Most of the K-pop I've been exposed to is a glossy Frankensteinian mash-up of hooks on hooks on hooks borrowed from all genres and styles. There are fantastic dance floor bangers and some poignant moments as well. However, since I can't understand half of the lyrics, the subtle stuff is a miss for me. I do find the fluid movement between English and Korean, often in the same measure, a point of intrigue. As a mid-western born and raised American with only a single language at my command, it's fascinating.

IU seems to have ascended a lot of typical K-pop trappings. Her solo act is unique in the genre. K-pop is rife with ensembles packaged like One Direction or The Spice Girls–a rebel, a prep, a jock, a punk, etc–with a carefully crafted flavor for seemingly everyone's taste.

Even more unusual as a solo act, IU sells out Korean and Japanese stadiums, and she writes and produces much of her own music. She started in the typical system but broke out of it to become one of the most influential artists on the Pacific Rim. She also acts (shocking.)

I'm not going to talk about K-pop anymore. I'm an outsider at best and a poser at worst. To pull an age-appropriate pop-culture reference from the 1980s, I'm too old for this shit.

From what I can see and hear, IU's production is on another level compared to her peers. "Lilac" is her fifth album. The dynamic range is good, and a massive sound stage expands and retracts throughout this song in particular. All the instruments and effects get plenty of space.

Flu is playful pop-escapism that wraps you in a breathy multilingual vocal performance accentuated with incredible stereophonic effects. I adore the accents and flares in the opening vocals. At 0:14, there is a building reverb on the melody's pitch as they rise in sync, transforming intimate vocal production into something as big as the horizon. I've noticed this effect in a lot of K-pop, and it's particularly well-executed here before snapping the performance back to something right in front of me.

About those birds: the sonic hook that initially got me to listen to this song repeatedly. They seem to tweet and sing far above and around the mix on and off starting at 0:58. Sure, it's a little gimmicky and perhaps on-the-nose for a song titled "Flu." Did I mention this came out in COVID-peak-2021? I don't care if it's kitsch; I'm here for it when executed so perfectly. I must say that I find the whole thing pretty infectious.

Data

Song: Flu
Album: Lilac
Artist: IU
Genre: K-Pop, Pop, Indie Pop
Year: 2021
Length: 3:08
Composer: IU
Producer: IU

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