Another week and another girl group rocking the K-pop industry. With this time rookie girl group IVE showing their amazing ability with their third ever single ‘After Like’. In the same week that features the long-awaited BlackPink comeback ‘Pink Venom’ and ‘458’ by CIX.
Following the success of their previous single ‘Love Dive’ which would top the Korean Billboard charts hitting double platinum with over 700,000 sales. ‘After Like’ has already been an instant success selling over 400,000 copies in just the first day. The K-pop community and Media reaction are so positive it’s only a matter of time before they top their previous sales.
The track is an extension to ‘Love Dive’ where the group take action on their feelings. Sampling Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 anthem ‘I Will Survive’ whilst incorporating genres EDM, Disco and house music. IVE has experimented with rap verses with the song being written by rapper Mad clown in collaboration with member Rei to great success. The song has a great beat alongside infectious lyrics making it extremely catchy and one of the reasons it has seen an excellent response from the music community.
Describing the song Rei states “[After Like] is a song about expressing your feelings not only with your heart but through your actions as well,” with the purpose of the song being to promote female empowerment and the feeling of girls and women being confident in their emotions pursuing what they want in love.
Accompanying their strong message and lyrics ‘After Like’ features a beautiful music video featuring bold colours, each member representing a different colour in the scene matched by the surrounding props and background. Each member has a distinct sexy look represented further with the changing of clothes showing the unity of the band and their ability to pull off different looks.
Overall, the music video is the perfect vision of the song and the beautiful dancing during the chorus of this song is only going to make this even more popular in the K-pop community with dance groups and fans trying to replicate this for the long term future. And with IVE only getting more popular and yet to release their first full album, there’s a likely chance we will see this group on Song of the Week in the future.
