SONG REVIEW: Flame – Cravity

Despite the amount of hype garnered for their debut, Cravity’s initial foray into the kpop world was kind of underwhelming. Sure, Break All The Rules has grown on me quite abit but to say that it was what I wanted from the group would be far from the truth. It felt too much like Monsta X lite and failed to really carve out a unique identity for the group. Follow up Cloud 9 felt like a more natural fit but new single Flame feels we’re back right where we started.

Rather build upon the many unique and strong soundscapes found on their debut album, Flame feels like much of what we’ve come to expect from the 2020 boy group scene. It’s glossy, polished, immaculately performed but lacks any real spark or identity of its own. There are some interesting instrumental flourishes but they’re too far buried within the mix to really stand out. The sparse opening verse does hold some promise but the following build feels too generic to really illicit any real reaction. It’s nice but the end product feels too bland. The chorus sufferes from a similar issue where it just kind of…. exists. I like the stuttering instrumental during the hook but the actual melody is barely even there. This all comes together to create something incredibly underwhelming. It’s really hard to write much about songs like this because there really isn’t much to say.

This is a shame because even though I’ve only been through the album once, I really fail to understand why Flame was chosen as the single. It’s easily one of the weaker tracks on the album and sounds even more underwhelming when the much stronger Believer plays right after. That song would have made an incredible single but I guess that’s for another post. In the meantime we’ve got another song to add to 2020’s growing list of generic dark boy group comebacks.

Verses: 7

Chorus: 7

Production: 7

Performance: 8

Final Rating: 7.25 / 10