Song Review: CRAVITY – Louder

It’s been great fun to watch CRAVITY grow into their sound. While their first few years were very hit and miss, they’ve recently found a way to mature their output without falling into the traps and tropes that often come with “maturation” in K-pop. To put it bluntly, their music ain’t boring. This statement is especially true with new single Louder, which is even stronger than its previews suggested. Highlight medleys and teasers had me ready for a cool (but empty) wordless chorus — the kind where a group lazily repeats a word or phrase over a dynamic beat drop. That turned out to be a red herring, as CRAVITY do exactly what I’ve been asking K-pop to do for months: they take a cool beat drop and actually sing over it. Yes, Louder feels like a song… not just a few fun ideas haphazardly strung together. I can’t believe I’ve gotten to the point where I’m raving about a song doing the bare minimum of what a song should do, but it’s thrilling to hear Louder move from dynamic verse to dynamic pre-chorus to dynamic two-part chorus, all while the production maintains momentum and delivers a few fun surprises along the way. Louder may not be reinventing any wheels. Instead, it’s delivering...