Whether the instrumentation is heavy electronic production (“P.R.R.W”), modest acoustic guitar strumming (“Oort Cloud”) or simple piano chords (“Stardust”), her voice remains the star. And while the songs follow this theme, the more obvious common denominator across End Theory is how Younha flexes her pipes. “All of a sudden, I started to wonder, ‘We decide what the time is, but then, what is time? What is at the end of the time?” The artist sought to answer those questions in her music. “There were claims that years 20 should be repeated again,” Younha said in a behind-the-scenes video about the making of the album, for which she wrote and composed the majority of the tracks. End Theory began with an existential quest. In “Stardust,” as she sings of a fateful intergalactic meeting, her words conjure a cosmic scene made more magical by her airy, angelic tone. It’s fitting that the lead single for Younha’s new album is titled “Stardust.” The established singer-songwriter, who first debuted in Japan in 2004 before launching a career in Korea two years later, has an ethereal voice. Nowhere is this attitude more obvious than in Waterfall’s final track “Re-Birth,” where the album culminates in the artist’s promise to be born again-likely a metaphor for this new chapter of his career. B.I may have been swept away by his sea of tears, but he’s prepared to build a sandcastle again (as he sings on “illa illa”) he may have “thousands of sorrows hidden behind a mask,” but he’s ready to “peel off all my fake skins” to face them (“Flow Away”). But a message of hope ultimately emerges, because where there are images of loss across the album, there are also opportunities for fresh beginnings. Most gutting are the lyrics in “Help Me,” a clear cry of desperation: “The boy in the empty room is lonely/ I want to run away/ Get me out of this abyss,” B.I sings. Across the 12 tracks written by B.I are aching expressions of pain and sorrow as well as apathy. The rapper, singer and songwriter left boy group iKon in 2019 following allegations that he bought illegal drugs, and this album is his first as a solo artist. B.I’s Waterfall is as much about reaching the end of the road as it is about starting on a new one.
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