Song Review: ZEROBASEONE – Running To Future

We’re on a steady march to ZEROBASEONE’s inevitable dissolvement/re-configuration. With their contract extended a scant few months, they’ve planned a final concert and special album set for release early next month. Leading up to that project, the group has promised two pre-releases. Running To Future is the first of these tasters and already feels like a swan song.

I’ve always been of the mind that a “final lap” of an artist’s career should be celebratory and exciting — not dreary and sentimental. That’s just down to personal preference, but the K-pop industry is clearly at odds with my thinking. They love a big, mushy ballad to mark these occasions. I assume we’ll get more interesting music in the coming weeks, but we’re kicking off the group’s final sprint with a mid-tempo heartstring-tugger that might as well have been picked from a bin of K-pop songs designed for this exact purpose.

Buoyed by a nostalgic clip show of behind-the-scenes material, Running To Future aims to tick off every trope it can manage. Sadly, the song itself is dull as can be, trading resounding percussive hits for tinny snare and trudging through a series of barely-there melodies that are constrained by their own lockstep structure. I’m a big fan of ZEROBASEONE but not always of the way they’re promoted and managed. This song feels too heavy handed and manipulative, like a treacly strings instrumental that swells up during an emotional scene in a drama. I don’t doubt the guys’ honest feelings about their journey so far and the road to come, but Running To Future simply feels like product for the sake of having product.

Grade: C