Album Review: WINNER (위너) EVERYD4Y

YG Entertainment has stepped back up to the Comeback plate with a new album for WINNER. I personally am a fan of Mino, as he plus Bobby makes Mobb, and if you read my iKON posts on Love Scenario (album review here, and unboxing here) as well as my unboxing on Bobby’s Love and Fall, I love Bobby. This means that by default, I also have to send some love to Mino and the rest of Winner… because they know Bobby. Some may call it faulty logic, I call it having my priorities straight. Winner came out with a new album today called Everyd4y. What we are going to do is discuss it track by track.

I do a lot of my album shopping on Music Plaza LA. Additionally, if you have never used Music Plaza before, this link will get you an extra 5% off of your first purchase!

You can also order a copy of the album from an eBay, as they typically have good prices. Plus, with eBay, you can save a little bit of money by using the E-Bates extension on your browser, as it will save you 2% on all album purchases, which definitely adds up.

What is E-Bates?

E-Bates is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Ebates, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over 80$ back from them for purchases I was going to make anyway. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!

If you’ve never used EBates before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using EBates. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from.  Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Sokoglam typically has 3%. These percentages Many other major retailers are on there as well.

Winner Everyday, Track by Track:

1. Everyday: This is the title track of the album. If I had to describe the feel of this song, it is bright, and feels a bit tropical to me. How it is stylized though, it sounds almost exactly like something that would’ve been on the iKON album that came out a few months ago. Honestly, I’m not a fan of it. I don’t think it stands out, and it sounds generic. I will point out though, the entire album is written by the members, which is a plus, not enough to make me like this song more.
2. Air: Yet again, I’m not a big fan of the track. It doesn’t really stand out to me, and I don’t think this track moves like I expect a track to move. When it starts out, it sounds like it could be a really great track with the bright, xylophone sound, but there is barely a shift in the instrumentation when you get to the chorus, and because of that, the song just dies. The track just doesn’t feel balanced.
3.  예보세요: This track legit sounds almost exactly like iKON’s Rubber Band. So far this entire album has me feeling like I’ve heard iKON produce all of this already. They even add those little extra sound effects that iKON likes to use. I hate to say this, but this album so far has been extremely disappointing. The first three tracks, including the title track all sound like something that I heard someone do before, but not as good. It’s just blah.
4. 손만 잡고 자자: The transition from the last song to this song, quite frankly is awful. The tracks are so different that they don’t even sound like they should be on the same album. So far, just based on the first four tracks, I feel like the whole album was slapped together, and they didn’t take their time working on it. Most likely this is because YG is pressuring them to release music, instead of giving them time to work, like iKON, who basically had a century to work on it, since they barely worked in Korea last year. I hate to say this, after listening to this track, Mino’s voice in it didn’t really appeal to me, and I normally like him. I don’t think his voice matches the instrumentation.
5. LA LA: Better transition from the last song to this song. Downside: I don’t like this track much either. It feels like it is missing something that I cannot put my finger on. It just makes it feel amateur, instead of polished like Winner usually is. I honestly hate to say that, because I’m so happy that they are writing all of their on music, but this entire album so far is extremely disappointing.
6. 애 걔: I like how this track is stripped back. Just the members plus a guitar. This track is so far the one I like the most on the album. Despite that, I don’t really like their vocal stylings for a ballad. They didn’t add enough harmonies to round out the ballad, and in general, their vocals aren’t very strong. Honestly, there was a lot they could have done with this track in regards to background vocals that they just missed out on. By this point, I really don’t think Winner knows how to harmonize or write harmonies for their members, and it is extremely disappointing.
7. 예뻤더라:  This song sounds like another iKON reject song. I don’t know if when the members were writing this album if it was immediately after iKON released their album, but it sounds like something that would have been on their album. Overall though, this song isn’t too bad. Not good enough to make it into my playlist, but it’s decent.
8. 사치: This sounds like a track that would have been on Bobby’s Love & Fall, which, if you read my unboxing, you would know that this is one of my favorite albums to date. There isn’t a bad track on it. This track sounds like it was handed off to them from Bobby, but they actually wrote this song themselves, from what the writing credits say, which has me questioning it, and quickly not liking the track as much.
9. Movie Star:  Yet again, I feel disappointed in this track from the first few notes. It just doesn’t stand out to me. There isn’t anything about this song that has me bobbing my head. It is just meh, even on my big speaker. I don’t have much else to say about this track.
10. Special Night: At this point in the album, I double checked to make sure I was a living human by throwing on TVXQ’s Love Line for a hot sec (you can read my thoughts on that album here). I can confirm I am alive. This album just isn’t very good. My issue with this track is the mixing. I think the vocals are popped too much, and the instrumentation takes on too much of a secondary role. This song definitely had potential to be good and just fell flat. It has a really funky beat to it, but you really have to listen for it, which sucks. I think I’ve just accepted a this point that i don’t like this album at all.
11. Raining: Ballad time again. It has these weird computer generated “doo doos” at the beginning. They also added very similar fake drums to what you would hear in the other tracks. It’s got that cymbal vibrate thing (which I kinda hate). On top of that, yet again, the song just doesn’t feel balanced. It needs something added or subtracted, and just rearranged all together. The harmonies also fall very flat. Just disappointment all around.
12. Have a Good Day: Okay, I’m trying really hard to finish out this review for you all at this point, and I wanted to give it a fair shot, but even this track isn’t mixed well. At this point, I went and double checked who the main producer was on the album, and it is actually the members of the group. I don’t like saying this, but I really don’t think they have the ear to be the main producers on an album, despite how happy I am that they are taking control of their own work. They ain’t no B.I. I’m not even going to say anything else about this track, as I think my thoughts are assumed at this point

K-Points: 216/5

I had to turn that album off, it was so disappointing. None of the tracks made it into my playlist. I’m not giving it a lower score for 2 reasons:

1. They did do most of the work themselves so A for effort, although I would fault the company for not double checking everything they were putting it out to make sure it was up to standard.
2. Most of my issues had to do with the mixing of the album, not the songs themselves.

They’re still failing though, and I 100% do not regret my decision to not pre-order this album. It wouldn’t have added anything to my album collection, and it would have sat there and collected dust. What I hate most about this situation is that these young idols just poured their heart and soul into this album, but when listening to it, it sounds like no one really came in and gave them advice on creating the final product, and mixing the track. I fault the company for that. I don’t fault the artists, as none of them have formal training in this. None of them went to college, or took classes in sound engineering, and now this album is released to the world, and going to fall flat for that reason. It makes me angry.

Did you like any tracks on the album? Let me know in the comments below, K-Nuggets!

사랑합니다!

–Rachel