Personal Picks: Trivia 轉 : Seesaw – Suga (BTS)

Due to the very nature of music, there are going to be songs that many of us will have very strong personal connections to. They might be songs that we adore purely on musical merit or they might be tied to memories or moments that linger within our minds every time the track replays. With this segment, I’ll feature some tracks that connect with me at a very personal level and shed some light on how and why I think they’re great.

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I still remember vividly the day that BTS released IDOL. While it was a track that was love at first sight for me personally, it was a track that divided many then and still does now. But more than the title track, I was more enamoured with the album that it lead. “Love Yourself: Answer’ was and still is a great album, adding a thrilling variety of dance and mid-tempo new tracks to the already potent ‘Love Yourself’ series. The brilliant, emotive EDM of I’m Fine remains one of my favourite BTS b-sides and the gorgeous Answer: Love Myself was a wonderful showcase for the groups vocals. But the track that has really stuck with me is Suga’s solo track, Trivia 轉 : Seesaw

Now we’ve seen Suga tackle solo efforts as his persona Agust D, but I’m not sure we’ve ever seen him as melodically inclined and soft as in Seesaw. And if this is how well the man can sing, I want to see him tackle more tracks of this style. Sure he’s a brilliant rapper and his raps here are fantastic but with the amount of character that Suga carries with his vocals, he can easily make A-class RnB material. I remember playing the hell out of this song when it came out (It was the peak of my Army phase) and while it has lost some of its sheen with time, the bones of the track are still very strong. This is my kind of Korean RnB, coasting on along a pleasant percussion and synth laden groove that knows exactly when to slow down and push forward, perfecting the kind of lo-fi formula that so many try but fail to achieve. As such, Seesaw never gets boring, instead acting as a warm embrace every time it plays and maintaining steady replay-ability nearly 2 years on from its release..

But the star of the show is the chorus, which ups the energy to more of a gallop, allowing Suga a rare moment to really stretch his vocals over an equally gorgeous melody that starts off strong and gets even better when the post chorus hook comes in to give us a great extended chorus. And with Adora’s backing vocals alongside the expertly placed vocal effects giving Seesaw a more refined and softer feel, Seesaw comes full circle to form one of the strongest BTS solo’s and one that I just know would have dominated the charts were it given a seperate promotional push.

Verses: 8

Chorus: 9

Production: 9

Performance: 10

Final Rating: 9/ 10