Song Review: ILLIT – Jellyous

When deciding which song off ILLIT’s newest album to feature as a “buried treasure,” I waffled between Oops and Jellyous. I’m glad I chose the former because now I get to write about the newly-promoted Jellyous as well. This is also another chance to wax poetic about how much Do The Dance has grown on me over the past few weeks. It’s by far my favorite ILLIT title track at this point.

Jellyous is also fun, though not as uniquely ear-catching. At its worst, the song conforms to the muted sing-song approach I’ve grown so tired of in K-pop, but a few elements lift it beyond these overused trends. A retro — almost chiptunes — thread of percussion supports the bulk of the track, adding to ILLIT’s mystical girl conceit. Then, we get a nice post-chorus that lets the herky-jerky phrasing of the melodies finally stretch into something more robust. These are the melodic moments ILLIT need more of. These refrains flesh out the track and push it beyond pure novelty.

Ultimately, Jellyous is too repetitive and flat to completely win me over in the way Do The Dance did, but it makes for a nice b-side and a decent promotional follow-up. My hope is that the group continue to tease out the more thrilling elements of their songs and eventually end up in a sonic landscape closer to a senior artist like Lovelyz (whose musical touches poke out here and there across ILLIT’s album in promising ways).

Grade: B-