2/3/2026 Error Fixed

There was a little HTML error in my "Knife" review that made a whole paragraph invisible... sorry guys... that's fixed now...

2/2/2026 Two Close Your Eyes Songs

With the exception of Boys Planet and its ensuing group ZEROBASEONE, K-pop survival shows do not interest me. Likewise I never watched the show Project 7 or cared about the debut of boy group Close Your Eyes (which I will here on out refer to as CYE) before hearing a brief clip of "All My Poetry". In fact, I was a little pessimistic about them. Judging from a clip of the show's last performances, none of them appeared to be able to really sing. 

And, look - for a long while I believed that K-pop stans who railed on and on about how idols used to be able to sing were fundamentally misunderstanding the point of music. I still do believe in my heart of hearts that supposed skill should not be valued over actually good music, and that both of those metrics are subjective, anyway. In the 2000s and 2010s a lot of songs were built around vocal agility in a very specific style, and not all of those songs were actually enjoyable; on a similar note, not all technically skillful vocalists are to everyone's taste. I think that 2020s K-pop so far is good and original. If the music is composed well and the vocals are not grating, I have no qualm with a voice that suits the music, even if it is not too traditionally skilled.

I guess part of the problem is that Twitter has made me hateful. Or that music nowadays takes a lot of inspiration from the 2000s and 2010s, and in order for such pastiches to land, you have to have people who can sing them, in my opinion. Or maybe I've just been lying to myself about having nuance all along. Who knows! Either way, I was determined to ignore CYE.

But holy fuck, man, their debut was so beautiful. "All My Poetry" is more than a title track. It's a song! The synths seem to sound with the same eager clarity and unique tone of the vocals, which blend together perfectly. Does any of that make sense? Almost every element comes together to form a dreamy and harmonious whole. Man, if I write it, does it matter? (I actually used to think the line was "If I'm right, it doesn't matter", which made the song seem more settled and calm rather than insecure and questioning.)

The more I listen to this song, the more I adore it. I listened to their whole first EP "ETERNALT", and found myself mostly struck by their song "To the Woods", which is almost as lovely. It even has a little ritard at the end of each jazzy chorus, which you really don't hear often in K-pop. Some parts of the mini album did feel a little old-fashioned (late-2010s), such as the weird muted-trumpet thing at the beginning of "To The Woods". Otherwise it's a good album for studying.

So, like I said, I love "All My Poetry" more and more with each listen - yet the deep chasm that bisects the song grows deeper and darker every time. That chasm is the rap.

I believe truly that, to borrow a phrase, we must shut down all K-pop rap until we figure out what is going on. I love rap as a genre and cannot in good conscience say that K-pop idols should be banned from taking part in it. But composers seem to believe fans are absolutely enamored with K-pop rap - that normal, tax-paying people are listening to a song awaiting with baited breath the moment when some guy interrupts the entire flow of the song to talk at you, not because he is skilled, but because he cannot sing. 

Ma Jingxiang is probably a really nice and talented man. He can probably dance and sing really well, given that he placed first on Project 7 - he will need those skills when the revolution comes and I topple the despotic regime of K-pop rappers once and for all. I believe in Ma Jingxiang as much as I believe in the rest of the group. And also his deep-voiced rap after the first chorus very nearly ruined this song. 

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I heap the blame primarily on him and not Minwook, whose subsequent rap is also not good, because Jingxiang's part is the most egregious. I curse the people who okayed this. I curse the K-pop industry for enabling this. This is the worst rap I've ever heard. At least when Felix raps in a Stray Kids song he isn't ruining anything special. This song was special!!!! 

And yet it remains special nonetheless! I would not argue with anyone who claims this is the best boy group release of 2025, even despite all this.

I want to also take a look at "X", which was not the next title track but the third, because I have heard good things about it from fans. I have to say that this part will not be equal to my review of "All My Poetry" simply because I haven't let "X" marinate, but I will try my best to be objective.

"X" aligns with what is becoming the CYE sound - synths, harmonies, and funky beat. There's even a trumpet in there sometime toward the end! I enjoy it. The first part that really got to me was the little call-and-response between Yeojun (?) and Kenshin, half because of the little halt in the instrumental, which happens again in the chorus. These stops are cute and they help propel the song forward.

I do also like the whispered "X, X, X" inserted in the chorus between fragments of sweet melody. As with "To the Woods", a synth-y post-chorus follows, and I like it a lot, even if "I got me in the mood" is a nonsensical lyric. 

I have to say that I am just not as interested in the subject matter of this song as I was in that of "All My Poetry". This is probably because I watched the music video with captions - the aesthetics of said video are cool but not new, and the English translation is very janky. Besides the prechorus, which is in the simple style I detest, this song is quite original.

This transition from youthful concept to "dark" concept between songs is emblematic of the direction the 5th generation of K-pop seems to be going in. In 2023, with the rise of groups like BOYNEXTDOOR and ZEROBASEONE, I expected gentler visuals to be in vogue. Nowadays, though, as always, boy groups are oscillating between the cheesy and the gritty. I feel like darker songs either tend to follow a title-track formula or blatantly rip off hip-hop and R&B songs trending in the West - and although this is not to say brighter songs do not have similar problems, I hear more originality and more fun in them.

I want to see where CYE is going. Frankly, it isn't their musical trademark I want them to keep developing. I won't be interested if every song sounds like "All My Poetry"; I'd much rather them maintain the song's bravery, its commitment to being musical first. I want to hear good things from them, not trendy things or shocking things.

So that is my review. Be sure to send hate mail if you agree.