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Wonho
Highline Entertainment“In English, when one says ‘I feel blue’, the word ‘blue’ is used [to describe feeling depressed or sad],” Wonho told NME in an interview ahead of the release of his third mini-album ‘Blue Letter’. “I wanted ‘blue’ to serve a double meaning of ‘feeling blue’ and… to flip the meaning of feeling blue to ‘feeling loved’, in context of the album.”
Just as there are many different shades of blue, with this record Wonho takes our immediate emotional associations with the hue and beautifully expands the palette. It’s a soul-stirring, sensitive release that gently shifts between shimmering celebrations to reassuring moments of encouragement and emotional vulnerability, each tone standing out in its own distinct way.
On the title track ‘Blue’, the singer is in jubilant mood. “I’m drowning down into the blue,” he begins over ticking percussion and a rubbery bassline, but this isn’t a dive into melancholia. “It feels amazing / Swimming high up to the sky, am I going crazy?” The hook that drops by later, effortlessly infectious and nonchalantly feel-good, bottles the sparkling mood of the song in a great earworm: “We are young, we are dumb / We just party all night long / When you feel the blue.”
The intro track, ‘Seasons And Patterns’, is uplifting in a different way, the instrumental two-minute fragment sounding as if it’s ushering us into Wonho’s own K-drama. Twinkling piano weaves around soaring strings that take you gliding through a sun-dazzled sky. The gently euphoric electronics of ’24/7’, meanwhile, find the star mixing shades, swirling synth-y optimism with lyrical reassurance. “I’m here for you 24/7,” he vows. “Let’s stay forever young.”
As you might instinctively expect of something blue, though, there’s sorrow present here too. The softly sad ‘No Text No Call’ laments a lack of communication from a former lover, Wonho sighing: “We used to talk all night to the morning, but now we don’t.” It’s a shame it follows immediately after the towering ‘Blue’, because its impact feels dampened in its neighbour’s shadow.
If the titular colour is a joining thread throughout ‘Blue Letter’, so is the biggest mass of blue on Earth – the sea. It pops up throughout Wonho’s lyrics, at once a symbol of fun, beauty, safety and peace. “You just have to take care of yourself and let it out,” he instructs on ‘24/7’, “I’ll be a wide ocean for you.” Over the rippling acoustic guitar of ‘Stranger’, he narrates: “The night is deep without you / The blue sea is asleep / I close my eyes and sketch you.”
If it wasn’t clear by now that the singer is a big softie, this record offers irrefutable proof. ‘Come Over Tonight’ starts off as a sultry slow jam but swiftly switches gear into something sweeter. “Can you come over tonight? / Promise I’ll hold you so tight,” he coos, before confounding expectations: “I can’t sleep without you / I’d be nothing without you.”
Just over a year since Wonho made his solo debut with ‘Love Synonym Pt. 1: Right For Me’, ‘Blue Letter’ showcases an artist growing rapidly in both confidence and his striking abilities. While the star has been involved with the writing and production of all of his releases so far, this record marks the first time he’s contributed his skills to every song on the tracklist. The results are impressive – particularly ‘Blue’, which would be an instant radio smash in a just world.
‘Blue Letter’’s songs might add more depth to our connections with Wonho’s signature colour in their sounds and sentiments, but there’s one more feeling we can now link back to blue thanks to the record as a whole. That’s excitement, because it’s hard not to listen to this mini-album and feel the exhilaration of watching a star in bloom.
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It seems weird that Måneskin frontman Damiano David’s debut solo album would land on Eurovision weekend, given that the past Italian victors have done so well to escape and thrive outside of the shadow of the cheese-romp song contest. Since their victory in 2021, the band have won love from the likes of Iggy Pop and Tom Morello and arenas full of fans that have probably never heard the words “douze points!”
Proving himself all over again, here stands David free from any of the rock’n’roll tropes that found him fame – and nearly ruined him. “In the last few years, we worked a lot and I was starting to lose the focus… I was basically making myself unhappy, and I was doing pretty good at it,” he told NME about the journey of “cutting out all the excess” that led to this solo venture.
The same rehab for excess can be said for the music too. Sure, ‘Funny Little Fears’ is huge in scale and melodrama (what else did you expect?), but it’s still a record free of distractions and laser-focused on straight-up pop bangers.
Opener ‘Voices’ meets the pomp with the personal as he tries to outrun his demons on a real stadium-rattler akin to that ‘Beggin’ cover he did so well, while ‘Next Summer’ has enough echoes of ABBA to make it a heartache epic. From the Lennon-y piano of ‘Sick Of Myself’ to the shameless summer indie-pop of ‘Tango’ to the star-reaching orchestral grace of ‘Mars’ and the Killers-y Americana road anthem of ‘The First Time’, it’s a collection that’s confident in squaring up to fears and all quite tastefully measured.
That includes some guest turns with Suki Waterhouse lending silky vocals to the “lighters up” earworm ‘The Bruise’ and viral sensation D4vd jumps on the sweet old-school waltz of ‘Tangerine’. Subtlety is the order of the day on the elegiac electro lullaby closer ‘Solitude (No One Understands Me)’ as David poetically cuts to the existential core of the record: “I’ve got a funny fear of flying, it’s not the height or the chance of maybe dying / It’s finding out the Earth was flat and finding out everybody here was lying.”
For his soul-baring, personal flair and finding his own musical accent away from the juggernaut that made him, you’d be forgiven for comparing this to a Harry Styles move. Despite bassist Victoria De Angelis enjoying a sideline as a techno artist, David and the band maintain that former NME cover stars Måneskin are currently “in training to get back different, better and harder”. We might miss a little bit of glam-rock insanity here, but ‘Funny Little Fears’ is a classy pop statement from an artist just comfortable in their own skin. As David offers on ‘Solitude’: “No one understands me, but I do”.
