"Black Out" by IU


“Black Out” 
IU

IU (real name Lee Ji-eun) has been making music for about ten years, during which she has taken more and more artistic control of her output. Her most recent album, Palette, was almost entirely written by IU herself. It seems her hard work paid off, as the album was awarded Album of the Year at the MelOn Music Awards (an annual South Korean music awards show). The album also received international attention: Billboard named it the best K-Pop album of 2017 and Fuse TV ranked it 12th on their “Best Albums of 2017" list (the only Korean album on the list). For me, the best track from Palette is the darkly intoxicating, and surprisingly refreshing, “Black Out.” The song was written and produced by IU, with music and arrangement by Lee Jong-hoon. (Source: Wikipedia)

K-Pop is known for it’s brilliantly polished and shiny production, nary a breath or note out of it’s predetermined place. “Black Out” is gleefully not that. The rhythm section is clanky and cantankerous. The synths stammer and stumble around. The vocal performance is breathless and cooly detached and the whole affair is topped off with a wobbly and woozy, if slightly precious, guitar solo.

The lyrics are a tipsy meditation on the fleeting nature of happiness, love, and life itself; taking the listener on an inebriated, slightly apathetic, yet earnest narrative journey. Throughout the song we are voyeurs to a muddled narrator attending a party and ruminating on the bliss and misery of overindulgence and attempting to truly enjoy the moment, hell, any moment. We are taken along with the narrator through confusing conversations, overly affectionate strangers, falling in love with the music, falling in love with the DJ, and, ultimately, double vision and physically falling down.

The lyrics manage to rise above mere hedonism with a clever, and quite sinister, reference to Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway. The novel revolves around the titular character throwing a lavish party in post-First World War England. During the party one of the guests at the party commits suicide by jumping out of a window. Mrs. Dalloway “gradually comes to admire” the suicide, as an act “to preserve the purity of his happiness.” (Source: Wikipedia) This is echoed by the lyrics “Today won’t ever come again, right?/ Of course it wont/ I don’t wanna remember from this moment on.” Heavy stuff for a party.

 -Daniel R.




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