As an exercise in rediscovery, every other Friday we will place a single ATEEZ track under the microscope to explore its deeper meanings to ATEEZ's discography, their Universe, and to ourselves.
Today I'm revisiting a song that had the misfortune of coming out on the same album as the greatest song of our generation.
I'm The One (Eden-ary Remix)
Release Date: Dec. 30, 2022
Album: Spin Off: From the Witness
Lyrics: EDEN, Ollounder, LEEZ, Peperoni, Oliv, Hongjoong, Mingi
Composition & Arrangement: EDEN, Ollounder, BUDDY, Leez, Peperoni, & Oliv
Arranger: Ollounder, Peperoni, Oliv
In general, my history with 'I'm the One' is a little complicated. And while I do want to talk about the remix specifically, I think you can't really think about a remix without thinking about the broader context of the song.
Remixes live in this weird territory where it's so hard to get them right, and the audience is so narrow. If you don't like the original, you're not exactly sitting around waiting for the remix. But at the same time, the more you love the original song, I think the less likely you are to enjoy a remix (same with covers too). What people want from remixes of the songs they love the most is to just receive more of the thing they love. But that's not really the point of a remix. A remix, like a cover, should be different. Because if you're doing more of the same thing, why are you even doing it? Why bother if you don't have anything new to say?
But I'm getting ahead of myself because, like I said, my relationship with the original 'I'm the One' is much more complicated than dislike or like.
The original came out at an odd time for me both personally and as I relate to ATEEZ. We were a year post COVID outbreak, and I was stuck doing a teaching model that had about 12 students in my classroom and about 20 watching me from their homes on a Zoom call all at the same time. I was absolutely miserable with my job, and at the time, what I loved about kpop--what made me interested in it and what I longed for in my kpop songs--was the simple escapism. When I listened to my favorite songs at the time, I could forget about everything else.
So enter ATEEZ. I became aware of them towards the end of 2020, though my awareness basically started and ended with the fact that Say My Name, Wave, and Answer were certified bangers.
And what I needed one morning in March, feeling very desperate before we were let out for spring break, sometime shortly after the release of Fireworks, was a certified banger to cheer me up. I so clearly remember being in my car not knowing what to listen to in order to motivate myself to drive my car somewhere I so desperately didn't want to go. Then I remembered ATEEZ and told spotify to play me a random song. Pretty sure it was 'With U', and I almost started crying.
So then I went back to Spotify, while stopped at a red light, and saw they had a new song out. I turned on Fireworks, listened for about twenty seconds, and then I turned ATEEZ off--something that is genuinely unthinkable to me now.
It took me maybe another week or two to find ATEEZ after that, but for the longest time, I associated Fireworks with that moment. I didn't really give it another chance, just blindly agreeing with people that it was their worst title track, and just being the most embarrassing atiny in existence. I'm not even sure I really ever listened to it until I saw it performed live, and was like OH THIS IS THAT SONG.
But then I did fall in love with it. In the way that all ATEEZ songs win me over, Fireworks won me over too.
And then a year later, here came the Eden-ary Remix.
The fandom response to the remixes on Spin Off was lukewarm at best. The people who were talking about it didn't seem to like it, but truthfully most people just weren't talking about it. Halazia stole the show because Halazia will steal every show forever until the end of time. Halazia is a once in a lifetime song, and most people didn't understand the reason for the Eden-ary remix when we already had a remix of Fireworks--the HEAT-TOPPING VERSION--which was presumably also an Eden-ary remix.
And that's what is so interesting to me about the Eden-ary remix: that they made it at all. They took a song that already wasn't a fan favorite and already had a remix, and then they made an even more divisive remix that sounds completely different from the first two. And that, I think, is why I love it both for the song that it is and what it says about art and Eden-ary's relationship to art.
The me that loves ATEEZ because of their commitment to their own artistic viewpoint, the depth of their lyrics, the way they speak to the human experience is basically unrecognizable from the person who turned off Fireworks before finishing it. That person didn't want her music to say anything--she wanted it to let her turn off her brain.
But ATEEZ always says something with their music, whether the song is a certified banger or a song that makes you cry. If you listen closely and consider the song more deeply, you will find unexpected layers and depth. They manage to tell their overarching story, while also managing to speak on the human experience and share their own experiences.
ATEEZ would never just release a remix because they want to chart or because they could or just to make money. Like every other song in their discography, their remixes have something to say about where they are as artists and humans.
Sometime before Outlaw came out, I became obsessed with the Eden-ary remix, boldly claiming that it was heralding the future of ATEEZ's discography, and now that Bouncy is out.. I don't actually think I was wrong. (I wasn't right either, but that's not the point.)
The Eden-ary remix is sort of messy, which I mean in the best possible way. It combines elements that shouldn't work together, but absolutely do because Eden-ary knows what they're doing. There's the almost gospel like chanting in the beginning that draws you into the song. The layer an almost banging sound on top of a melodic instrumental layered on top of Mingi's deep rap.
There's the high pitched, inhuman voice (reminiscent of the parrot in Bouncy) chanting the lyrics along to the beat, and then the deep distorted voice. But when the members start to sing, the background music quiets almost, letting the vocals come through.
And that's what the Eden-ary remix says to me: sometimes things are messy, but they're also beautiful. The mess is what's interesting. And even underneath the mess and the confusion and distortions that the world can make, we are still us. When we are who we are, the rest of the world quiets--the rest of it doesn't matter.
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