Six years away, and she chose a wave — JEONG EUNJI's 'i love LOVE'

In three lines

• JEONG EUNJI released her 5th mini album 'Summer, I' at 6 p.m. on August 11. Seven tracks.
• The title track 'i love LOVE' is a band-sound song that likens love to a wave.
• Her previous mini album was July 2020, so it has been about six years and one month.

What arrived the day before yesterday

Item	Detail
Artist	JEONG EUNJI
Album	5th mini album 'Summer, I'
Title track	'i love LOVE'
Release	August 11, 6 p.m.
Tracks	7
Previous mini	July 2020, 'Simple'

She took part in producing every track and is credited on the title track's writing and composition. Jukjae, 10CM and So Soobin worked on the album tracks.

Two dates inside the title

The album is called 'Summer, I'. By her own account the release date is August 11 and her birthday is August 18, so the words that could hold both were 'summer' and 'I'.

Rather than writing the dates into the title, she swapped them for a season and a pronoun. The week between August 11 and August 18 gets folded into 'summer' and 'I'.

A title like that reads as just a summer album until you hear the explanation. After it, it becomes a private calendar. The same two words are legible two ways.

The wave as a figure

The title track likens the feeling of love to a wave, over a band arrangement.

Waves are a common figure for love. They come in and pull back, they differ in size each time, they don't stop. Common enough that saying something new with it is hard.

There is one property of waves that gets used less, though: the water isn't what travels — only the energy is. The water rises and falls in place, and what moves is the shape called a wave. As a figure that asks what actually travels and what stays put, the song steps one place off the usual spot.

Discovery note

Set aside the fact that it's been six years and listen. When a gap is long, the gap gets heard before the song does. What's left when you subtract that information is the album's real size.

It's a band arrangement, so listen to the drums and bass separately. On a band song by a singer with a strong voice the accompaniment tends to recede, and how that balance was held is the result of the producing.

Run the seven tracks through in order once. An album with several writers usually differs in colour track to track, but with one person producing throughout, that difference gets bound rather than scattered. Bound or scattered is the judgement.

Just give it a listen, trust me.