“Killin’ Me Good” by JIHYO
Jihyo is a member of Twice, one of the more-successful K-pop acts to come out in recent years, as South Korean pop music has gone global. As such stories tend to go, the members of the more-notable groups eventually start to venture out on their own. And so it is with Jihyo, who dropped her first EP, “Zone”, on 18 August 2023.
This project has the backing of JYP Entertainment and Republic Records, two of the biggest labels in the game and, of interest to note, features Californian rapper 24kGoldn.
“Killin’ Me Good” is the opening track on “Zone”. The writers of the song are American musicians MarcLo, Melanie Joy Fontana and GG Ramirez alongside Michel Schulz (Germany) and J.Y. Park (South Korea). And to note, this is a track which Jihyo began teasing circa early-June, 2023.
The Lyrics of “Killin’ Me Good”
Most directly interpreted, the term “killin’ me good”, in context, is another way of the vocalist putting forth that she has fallen in love. So basically, the lyrics serve the purpose of Jihyo celebrating her relationship with the addressee.
In the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing being relayed here that we, as music fans, haven’t already come across numerous times before. And perhaps the most-notable thing about this track is the fact that not only is it overtly romantic but also, in the second verse, sports a sexual connotation.
Meanwhile, K-pop acts aren’t known (as far as we can tell) to drop straight-up love songs, and this may be the first from a South Korean artist that we’ve come across which has what can be deemed an undeniable sexual innuendo.
But as noted earlier, American label Republic Records is also supporting this outing. And K-pop is becoming increasingly globalized, meaning that artists are now challenged with appealing to a wider, and may we also say Western audience. So it’ll be interesting to see how the rest of “Zone” plays out, i.e. if Jihyo sticks to this standard.
