Song Review: CORTIS – What You Want

First impressions are important, and in K-pop they often come via pre-release. Big Hit’s new boy group CORTIS made a lousy first impression with GO! last week. However, I’d say a follow-up is even more important than the first impression. With new expectations and information driving the listener experience, this is where an artist either confirms or betrays those conceptions. New single What You Want is more palatable than its predecessor, but I hate to say it confirms the issues I have with CORTIS’s sound.

The approach around CORTIS’s rollout continues to rub me the wrong way. The hyper-affected nature of these songs feels forced and cringy, especially given the guys’ “self-produced” branding. They’re trying so hard to seem as if they’re not trying at all, and that combination is off-putting from a listener perspective. Even the term “conceptual performance film” attached to this song’s video feels oddly pretentious. Of course, all this posing and posturing would be forgivable if the music was great. That’s where we end up in big trouble.

In this case, the band tries to make What You Want sound rough and thrown together. The vocals sound as if they were recorded in a tin can, while the instrumental sludges along like an indie grunge band picking at Nirvana’s scraps. It’s an exhausting schtick and not a whole lot of fun to listen to. They’re clearly aiming to move away from the “K-pop sound” (whatever that may be) but if I want to listen to bad indie rock I’m already spoiled for choice and if you’re going to venture down this route the songwriting better be top-notch. Everything about What You Want feels more like a high school talent show than the new group from the world’s biggest record label. That’s obviously what CORTIS are going for, but I don’t understand why anyone would want that.

Grade: C-