The Deep Falls Deep into Mediocrity
Despite her stage name, Yoo-Jin continues to be shallow on her new single.
K-pop is quite a divisive genre within music, from its infamous stan culture online to its cheesy lyrics with bubbly, peachy pop production alongside its biggest critique of stealing fashion, style or trends from Black American culture and media specifically in Hip-Hop/Rap, capitalising off its success via assembling a boy band or girl group, giving members rap lyrics written by anonymous figures so they can perform those lyrics on stage or for a TikTok dance that could potentially go viral.
Despite how manufactured South Korean pop records are, they have been a commercial coup since the early 2020s!
From 2019 to 2024, K-pop music streams have increased by 300 percent thanks to towering bands such as BTS and BLACKPINK with their songs “Dynamite” and “How You Like That” respectively!
(BLACKPINK Girl Group // Photograph: YG Entertainment)
The musical KPop Demon Hunters released last year generated 24 million dollars in the box office worldwide and currently, the girl group KATSEYE is the next to bloom, with their tertiary EP WILD being their first project to skyrocket to number 1 on the Billboard 200 charts; the girl group KiiiKiii have also been peered at by the K-pop community and critics with the band winning the “Next Generation" title at the Golden Disc Awards!
K-pop artists on the surface are currently shining in the spotlight… but how are musicians who are deep below in the indie underground?
Introducing: Park Yoo Jin!
The Deep is a late millennial musician from Daegu, South Korea, she started releasing R&B songs in 2019 with the artist Crack Bit under the moniker “Morethan7”; a year later, she decided to go solo, releasing Contemporary R&B and K-pop EPs until 2023 where she switched up her sound with her third project Messy Room where it sound morphed from your standard R&B music to a bubbly PinkPantheress-esque style with her sensually singing over Dance-Pop, 2-Step and Liquid Drum/Bass music with lead singles such as BAPPI gaining heavy traction in niche pop spaces online!
Immediately after that era, Park switched up her sound again, transferring over to EDM, Electronic Pop and Electro House music reminiscent of the hit singles you’d hear back in the late 2000s and early 2010s such as “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha.
Her newest EP Electric Pink and debut album KPOP B!TCH both feature this sonic with both projects being a huge success for Park Yoo-Jin, pushing her closer and closer to the mainstream world!
(KPOP B!TCH album cover // Photograph: S😵💫UP)
Her sophomore LP (supposedly titled) “Quest” will most likely hit digital shelves in 2027, but on August 21st, 2026, she released what seems to be… a lead single!
I wasn’t touched on Park’s new sound featured on KPOP B!TCH, mainly because the “Indie Sleaze Revival” trend that’s been circulating in the mid 2020s with pop girls such as Charli XCX, Ninajirachi, Slayyyter, the duo Frost Children and Kim Petras, have been… sporadic in quality.
Stellar homages such as Brat and Wor$t Girl In America by Charli XCX and Slayyyter are the pinnacle of this genre meanwhile records like I Love My Computer and Halo by Ninajirachi and Tiffany Day respectively are highly derivative, lacking in personality and sonically vapid despite being sold as high class, “authentic” music… KPOP B!TCH is on the latter end but it wasn’t painfully flawed like Halo, it was simply limp.
I was foreseeably expecting The Deep to continue forth with that sound as this fugazi early-2010s-nostalgia-bait is still up and running on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, but to my surprise, she’s giving herself a new sound for this new era!
Stream “Kiss Me Better” here on (Apple Music) (Deezer) (SoundCloud) (Spotify) (Tidal) (Youtube Music Video)
The Deep’s new single “Kiss Me Better” is a tropical, facile yet fresh track on a topic any casual including you could find relatable, love!
It doesn’t try to do anything daring as that is not the goal, the code-mixed lyrics are simple, sensual and sweet, the production screams summer and vocally it is soft and scanty!
The lyrics are so minimal that it’s practically asking to be on the radio, I haven’t heard too much of The Deep’s work, but in a vacuum, the songwriting (and sonics of this track in general) here is akin to hit songs in the 2010s, the English lyrics are lucid to the common listener with lines such as “I needed your attention”, “you want a piece of me” and the chorus “Kiss me better, do it like it matter (mwah)”, meanwhile the Korean lyrics have a pinch of more effort with her claiming that lying makes her feel pain and how she’s so “on the verge” that she can’t fathom her partner letting go of her… adorable.
The producer Warpstr most likely inspired these lyrics. This instrumental is bright in sound with these electric, industrial yet bouncy synths, but not very vibrant, it could have used better mixing or additional synths to give it that OOMPH that’s missing in my ears. Do you think it sounds complete?
The drums consist of gentle kicks and distorted, sharp snares, both of which are quite quiet. It feels like they’re partially present because it’s expected to include drums in an instrumental, the snare sounds intentional, but the kicks sound like they were added as a placeholder that should’ve been improved or replaced.
The drums… work… over the bubblegum bass synths but that’s it, they’re adequate, but maybe that’s all they need to be for a track like this…
I would make the drums more punchy with some groove to lean more into the tropical atmosphere that this single sings with these springy synths but perhaps that’s just personal taste, a House-esque remix of this track would be appealing to me, would her audience dig that?
Vocally, how did Ms. Park do? Well honestly, when I first pressed play on this track and heard “Kiss me better” with her elongating the “bet” part, I rolled my eyes. I bet she was proud of that take.
Her performance here leaves me inattentive with the song, despite her vocals being at the forefront, it’s so airy that my dome treats it as backing vocals.
To be clear, her execution here isn’t bad, it’s just ever-so-slightly above average. I like her vocal inflections but I can imagine them being better, no matter what emotion she tries to convey throughout the track. I would say “she sounded her best on the pre-chorus and chorus” but that’s expected on literally any pop song, to have a catchy, quotable or memorable chorus for you and I to recite. I’ll still give credit as it is due, the chorus section is solid and can be addictive to others.
Out of the three core elements of this track, I champion the instrumental and condemn… the instrumental (apologies Warpstr).
Although pieces of the production on this track are bubbly, catchy and well produced, the full product is underdeveloped; I believe the writing and vocals could have been stronger if Warpstr came with something more inspiring.
I don’t know the creative process behind this track, maybe that’s all Park asked of him in terms of production, but from my own experience and from what I’ve seen with other musicians, the production fundamentally set the tone for a song and you can tell if the performer admired an instrumental because they would usually sing or rap their heart out while in process of recording the track, they know that “this is the one”, opposed to a beat that was sent their way via email or text message, and they simply thought,
“Yeah, this is cool, this could work.”
For a song like this, although it is most likely meant to be simple, you can still give it additional seasoning, some more flavour for your fans. Many hit pop songs have a simple formula in the DAW, but the instruments used to create the track make the final product far more grander and ear catching to the listener.
“Kiss Me Better” by The Deep is an adequate, passable, K-pop song that could’ve been so much more fun if it spent more time in the oven… but did it have to be better? How would that benefit Park if what she released is already good enough to be a nice, end of summer, love song that can generate waves on TikTok? Most of KPOP B!TCH sounded undercooked too and suffers from being “good enough”, nothing more, nothing less.
I do encourage her to continue with this sound, because it’s miles away from trash, it has a lot of potential with her songwriting and vocals (that chorus does admittedly make me return to the song) plus she’s done tracks similar to this before, she just needs that flame to ignite her and have her go above 50-60% in effort.
Would I recommend this song to others? Despite my criticism… Yes!
I’m sure fans of The Deep will enjoy this alongside your standard (K-)pop fan, though I do feel like The Deep isn’t really standing out in either the K-pop or Bloghouse/Sleaze Revival scene, there are an abundance of K-pop musicians who do Park’s sound better and many Indie Sleaze revivalists who execute that early 2010s Electropop style superior.
The Deep kind of just… exists in both spaces with nothing of true significance musically, like what would you say is so special about her? … At least her fashion sense is on fleek!
(The Deep for KPOP B!TCH // Photograph: Yoo Jin Park for DAZED Magazine)
On review sites such as RateYourMusic, the user score averages to 3.24 / 5 stars (or a 6.5/10). K-pop fanatics on the site have stated in their listen logs that the track is “so generic”, “cute but I might not come back to this often” and “just boring as shit.”
Fans who commented on the music video for this single claimed that it was the right way to end the summer, “another hit from the queen” and that it gives off “California Gurls” (by Katy Perry) vibes, which they love (I can hear it too honestly).
The Deep still has a long way to go with her music and I’ll be here for it!
What are your thoughts on the track?
Did you know about The Deep before this?
And what was your song of the summer?
-
JIXCO 2026
