As an exercise in rediscovery, every other Friday we will place a single ATEEZ track under the microscope to explore its deeper meanings, both to ATEEZ's discography, their universe, and to ourselves.
Today I'm revisiting one of the earlier tracks that required a bit of time for me to truly love it.
Desire
Release Date: January 15, 2019
Album: TREASURE EP.2 : ZERO TO ONE
Lyrics: EDEN, BUDDY, LEEZ, HLB, Kim Hongjoong, Song Mingi
Composition & Arrangement: EDEN, BUDDY, LEEZ
From the very beginning, long before I entered the fandom, the worst possible opinion I ever held about an ATEEZ song was "it's not my usual jam, but it's fine." And then, without exception, that song would start to grow on me as I began to appreciate it more in context and hear details that I had missed before.
Such is the story of Desire.
I became Atiny just as the Treasure series was starting to wrap up in late November, early December of 2019. I had already heard and really liked Treasure, Say My Name, and possibly Wave, but I wasn't really in any fandom and didn't pay much attention to groups outside of the very few, mostly second gen groups I was already familiar with. I was strictly all about the music. But that all changed on November 15, 2019 (which is a separate and long story for another time), which led to me fixing my eyes solely on ATEEZ and never looking back.
My journey began with a deep dive into their discography before I ever learned a single name. I really couldn't believe how much I liked their music as a whole. And I think because there were some songs that just stood out so much in that early discovery period, that when a song didn't vibe with me in the same way it felt so very odd.
Desire, in particular, starts off in such an unassuming way--especially coming on the heels of Say My Name's amazing final chorus--that it was easy for me to tune it out. So while I never skipped it, I also never really paid it any attention. Until one day, I did pay attention. And then I started thinking about the meaning of the song. And then I realized--the song is actually genius.
The instrumental arrangement of Desire tells the story and conveys the meaning of the song just as clearly as the lyrics do if you really think about it. The song begins relaxed and maybe a bit uncertain? Like how you don't realize that you're slowly becoming addicted to something. Then as we move through the first verse, the intensity builds only to be dropped for the chorus which begins with soft restraint that is oh-so-slowly unleashed until we reach the second verse where it is reigned in just a bit again only for the pattern to repeat. But then we reach the bridge and our grip is loosening up until finally all control is lost in the explosion of the final chorus (which isn't the chorus, it's more like an outro).
But the thing about Desire (and the thing about desire) is that all that build up never leads to a satisfactory conclusion. There is no bombastic final chorus like with Say My Name or Guerrilla or literally any other ATEEZ song. We build up to. . . just the end of the song. And we are left hanging.
And that's the point.
Desire is never satisfied. Even when you get the thing you think you want, there's always something else to want. Desire just never goes away. It, like the song, has no final chorus. You just want and want and want. . . and then you die, I guess.
It's really just a brilliant bit of subtle storytelling. And if you listen to the instrumental underneath all the ad libs at the end, you can hear hints of what their sound would be like once we reached The World. Which is crazy. You can hear it pretty clearly in this performance from the XR Concert. While the extended version of the song paired with the more understated choreo at the end (when I might expect them to be absolutely losing their minds) somewhat undercuts my interpretation of the song, the instrumental is so addicting that I would pay good money for it to be included on a remix CD.
You hear that, Eden? Gimme the extended version. I know you have it.
I desire it.
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