SOYEON What a Wonderful Life — A Full Album That Runs Like an EP
SOYEON's What a Wonderful Life is billed as her first full-length solo album, arriving five years after the 2021 EP Windy and after years spent as I-DLE's primary producer, writing "Tomboy," "Nxde" and "Queencard" for other members to sing. The billing oversells the format. Eight tracks, just under twenty minutes total - shorter than some of I-DLE's own mini-albums. What she does inside that runtime is more interesting than the runtime itself.
Every track on the album was written and composed by Soyeon herself, with Groovyroom and R.Tee among the credited collaborators - the same production circle she's leaned on for I-DLE's biggest singles, now applied to material only she performs. The rollout single, "STAR," her first solo song in five years, previewed the shift with retro synthesizers and a driving bassline that owes more to disco than anything on recent I-DLE records.
The album's frame is a resignation letter. "I'm Gonna TOESA," the title track, opens with narration from comedian Kian84 before settling into a warm, band-driven arrangement built around the idea of quitting a job to start living now instead of later. It's the album's most complete song - verse, hook and bridge all doing distinct work - and the accompanying video, a 2000s office-drama pastiche, sells the concept without overplaying it. As a thesis statement for the record, it works.
What follows doesn't always commit to the same idea. "Bankroll" and "icebluerabbit" - the latter named for her own producer alias - run under two and a half minutes each and end before they develop past a single hook. "야채 싫어 송" ("Hate Veggie Song"), at ninety seconds, reads more like an interlude that escaped being labeled one. Individually, none of these tracks fail; stacked together, the album starts to feel like a collection of ideas SOYEON didn't want to leave in the studio rather than songs built to stand on their own outside the concept holding them together. "Hate Veggie Song" is the weakest cut on the record - a novelty aside that adds texture to the concept but nothing to the discography.
"Amigo," featuring labelmate Minsu, and "Would You Love Me" are where the record finds its footing. "Would You Love Me" is the album's longest song at just over three minutes, and it uses the extra time: a slower build, a chorus that returns with variation instead of straight repetition, and room for Soyeon's vocal - rather than her rapping - to carry a full section on its own. It's the clearest evidence on the record that a longer format would have suited her. Given nineteen minutes to work with, the best moment on the album is the track that pushes closest to four.
Soyeon has described the shift from her earlier work as one of exposure rather than concealment. "I showed myself exactly as I am," she told allkpop, contrasting the album with years of writing while thinking about how she'd be perceived by an audience. That framing holds up against the tracklist: the genre-hopping between rock, retro synth-pop and softer balladry reads less like indecision and more like someone refusing to filter a mood before putting it on the record, even when a given mood only lasts ninety seconds.
What a Wonderful Life doesn't resolve whether SOYEON the solo artist needs more room than eight tracks gives her - it just makes the question obvious. Whether Cube gives her that room next time, or keeps the format tight and the concepts rotating, will say more about her solo career than this record alone can. What a Wonderful Life is out now via Cube Entertainment.
