K-Pop A-Z Review: GFriend – Rough

One song. Every day. Alphabetical order.

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Rough (from Snowflake – 2016)

Previous Thoughts: “From the intricate string sections to the dramatic guitar solo, you can really sink your teeth into the instrumental. From a production standpoint, it’s pretty much flawless. Everything feels so dense and layered, yet doesn’t obstruct the actual song from moving forward.” (full review)

Updated thoughts: This was one of the first songs I ever wrote about on the blog and even though I gave it a “9” back then I was far too critical. Though I consider Navillera to be my personal favorite GFriend track, this is objectively their best. It’s utter perfection from start to finish: melodically rich, dripping in personality and nearly operatic in its drama. It’s hard to believe there was a time when a song like this could become one of the preeminent hits of its year, but Rough was unstoppable in 2016.

The brilliance of early GFriend was their ability to forge a signature sound and nudge it forward just enough each time to feel fresh without being a complete departure from what their audience craved. Rough marks a natural conclusion to Glass Bead and Me Gustas Tu, taking the sounds from those two classics and deepening them enough to feel mature and forward-looking. This makes it the finale to one of the strongest trilogies in all of K-pop.

Grade: A+