“Bad Love” by Key (키), Tuesday, March 14, 2023 + Bad Love track by track (reformatted post)

 

Two years ago, I wrote about Key's mini album Bad Love.  I decided to reformat my original post as track-by-track, a kind of home for the songs on this record, should I write about the record at a later date. While SHINee has been the singer's main gig, Key has managed to release music every year as a solo artist. Bad Love is my favorite of his efforts. So today, let's look at this retro-electro-pop EP by the fashionista from Daegu.

1.  "Bad Love." The title track reminds listeners of Lady Gaga's 2009 hit "Bad Romance," speaking about the toxicity of a relationship that may have started under good intentions, but devolved into something toxic. The music video feels like a futuristic vision from the '80s, in other words, looking futuristic but dated with '80s technology. 

2. "Yellow Tape" builds on the theme of entering relationships cautiously.

3. "Hate that..."  a duet with Taeyeon, was also released as a single from the EP. Unlike "Forever Yours," Taeyeon appears in the video version of the song. One Shinee fan podcast suggested that "Hate that..." was a follow up to "Forever Yours," which frankly is depressing, showing the end of a love affair. 

4. "Helium" is the only track in English. It was written by Clarence Coffee, Jr. The song references the '60s futuristic cartoon The Jetsons, particularly the teenage daughter Judy Jetson. The song supports the aesthetic theme of Bad Love, retro futurism. 

5. "Saturday Night" talks about not being able to go to the same places because of a break up. In some ways, the song seems to reflect the lazy feeling many of us got during the pandemic. Even when the world started opening up, we didn't want to go out. We felt self-conscious about our faces and bodies. We didn't have the energy we used to for social situations.

6. "Eighteen" (End of My World) is perhaps the most intimate track on the record. Key describes the song as a letter to his eighteen year old self, just before debuting in Shinee. Key wrote both "Saturday Night" and "Eighteen," whereas the other tracks were written by other songwriters. It's a rather melancholy track. K-pop stars are shrouded in a high level of image control by their record labels. There are rarely any "Justin-Britney" or "Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck" relationships. Key was in one publicized relationship with Nichole Jung from KARA, but has kept a low dating profile since. "Eighteen" sounds like a song with regret about Key being unable to be himself in the spotlight.