WJ Stay? is WJSN’s most recent mini album. It was released on the 8th of January 2019 and contains 7 songs, including the title track: “La La Love”.
WJSN is a 13 member South Korean-Chinese girl group. They are also known as Cosmic Girls.
La La Love
WJSN are known for their gorgeous colour schemes, and this music video is no different. Particularly masterful is how thinner musical texture are complimented by simpler scenes in the video (2:48).
Unfortunately, this was overshadowed by the headache that the rest of the music video brought upon me: a mixture of close ups, and constantly changing, quickly moving camera angles left me dizzy. Not only is the video saturated with close ups of objects, but also of the members staring at the camera, resulting in me taking my glasses off and moving the computer as far away as possible to get some sense of space back. Overall, this was not one of their best music videos. 2/5 stars!
You’ll be happy to hear that in this case, the song far outshines the music video. The pulsating rhythm keeps the song moving throughout and, along with the variety of overlapping instruments, creates a spacey atmosphere that suits the group well. I was particularly impressed by the power of Yeonjung’s vocals (1:12) and thought that they complimented SeolA’s purer melodies (2:48) well.
As for the lyrics, they describe the moment when someone sees someone and falls in love. A bit on the insta-love side for my tastes, but not horrible either. 3.5/5 stars!
You Got
The playful, funky instrumentation is a promising start to the song, mixing with the girls’ vocals to create their signature spacey sound. I also particularly enjoy EXY’s rap verse at 2:22. That being said, the chorus is a bit of an anti-climax and the repetitiveness of some of the synths does get a bit irritating. 3/5 stars!
Star
The group has good vocals, so this was never going to be a bad song, but it’s also nothing special: it really sounds like the typical K-Pop ballad that feels almost obligatory at this point. It was a wasted opportunity to perform this on music shows, in my opinion, as it doesn’t show any of the uniqueness of the group. 2/5 stars.
Memories
This song brings in an orchestral sound reminiscent of something GFRIEND would release. While it’s not bad, it also feels like a lot of other songs that I’ve heard before. Again, my favourite part would have to be EXY’s rap verse at 1:59: it breaks up the high-pitched, sweet vocals of the rest of the song very nicely. 2/5 stars.
Cantabile
After the past two more generic songs this feels like the girls are returning to a sound that is more their own. There is still the GFRIEND-style orchestral instrumentation, but accompanied with a funkier rhythm. Again, I was highly impressed by EXY’s rap at 1:28, but I also found Yeoreum’s voice particularly soothing (e.g. at 0:27). My biggest complaint, would be that the chorus started to annoy me. 2.5 stars!
12 O’clock
And we have arrived at my favourite track of the album! I’m absolutely in love with the mixture of classic WJSN spacey elements and the small sections of jazz (e.g. around 0:30). Unlike the rest of the album which has seemed a bit lyrically bland, this song is interesting and seems to urge the audience to love them and take hold of your chance to be happy with them before it is too late. 4/5 stars!
UJUNG
Okay, so this is obviously a fan song (the group’s fandom are called Ujung) and as I’m not a huge fan of the group, the song is less meaningful to me and still seems a bit like the obligatory ballad song. That being said, the lyrics are poignant, if predictable. 2.5/5 stars!
THE ALBUM OVERALL
In general I am split quite down the middle. In fact, the album seems to have two contrasting sections: the funkier songs with more classic spacey WJSN vibes, and then the ballads and more orchestral tracks. The latter seemed quite bland and generic, but the more obviously WJSN songs were far more interesting. The entire album also had fairly generic lyrics.
| CATEGORY | SCORE (5) |
| Title Track | 3.5 |
| Variety | 2 |
| Cohesiveness | 3 |
| My Music Taste | 2.5 |
| Overall | 3 |
If you’re interested, I downloaded the following songs from this album: La La Love, You Got, and 12 O’clock.
What did you think of the album? Do you agree with my opinions, or do you think I’m completely wrong? What was your favourite song? Please let me know!
Also, if there is any album you would like to see a review of (K-Pop or otherwise), leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to get on it!
Happy listening, Keira x.
Headphones and Hyperboles 
loved this post,m this is a new to me band so i enjoyed trying some new myusic 🙂
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Thank you and yay! I love it when people give new music a shot.
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This is such a good post! I never thought of doing any kpop related post like this before. 🤔 I’m not really a WJSN fan but it was really interesting to see your thoughts on the album!
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Thank you 😉 it’s actually really fun to mix it up a bit and do both kpop and books, and yeah I only got into them recently myself 😊
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It is! I try to do that myself, though I mostly make monthly favourite kpop songs posts for now. But I might try this too, if you don’t mind! 😊 With girl groups I’m a little picky, I like darker themes for the most part, but I have watched a couple of WJSN MVs before and they looked pretty nice!
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Oh go ahead Id love to read your posts😊 I also do monthly faves although for music in general not just kpop 😂 and yeah I used to be super picky with girl groups (and I kind of still am to some extent) but I find myself being quite picky with big groups now too.
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