Song Review: Youngtak – GOGO

I don’t usually write about trot singers on this blog. Trot is an entire musical ecosystem that’s mostly separate from what most people imagine K-pop to be, though its sound certainly holds sway over the larger industry. Every once and awhile, a trot singer branches out to more “K-pop” material and these two worlds collide. Though he’s been active for longer, Youngtak has been a successful trot singer for a decade now. Today, new single GOGO (꺾어) reinvents him as a synth-pop dance artist. The opening of the track gives listeners a fake out as cinematic guitar spotlights a very trot-like vocal. Soon, GOGO‘s addictive beat arrives and we’re in completely different territory. Youngtak’s vocals are warped by effects as electro bass pulses underneath. The arrangement works in spite of itself, mostly because the groove is so satisfying. As with so many modern K-pop dance tracks, GOGO is let down by its lack of progression. The song is in constant build toward a climax that never materializes. This makes GOGO feel more like a riff than a fully-developed project, which matches its genre-switching place in Youngtak’s catalog. Still, I wish the song fully committed to its best instincts beca...