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 and universe and to ourselves.
Today, I'm revisiting a song that I've always loved but that received a pretty lukewarm reception from the fandom.
It's the song that turned this household into a Pepsi household.
Summer Taste
Release Date: July 14, 2021
Album: Pepsi Collab
From the day this collab was announced, I was so excited. I was a fresh-faced baby-tiny who hadn't even experienced her first comeback. This was to be my first experience with ATEEZ releasing new music.
And it didn't matter to me that only two members of ATEEZ were in it (Yunho and Hongjoong) nor did it matter that it wasn't really a comeback. It was new, and I was ready to stream it. Hongjoong was even listed as a writer, so to me, that meant we were all about to take this Very Seriously. And I thought, the fandom is ready for this, we're going to do so great, we're going to show how in demand ATEEZ is for future commercials, they're going to be the biggest thing in the whole world.
It should have been my first taste of bitter disappointment when it comes to streaming any ATEEZ thing that's not a Korean music video. However, two days before it was to release, ATEEZ surprised dropped the music video for Dreamers. I no longer remember what the first day MV views for Dreamers were, but here's what I do remember:
I was on vacation with my husband, son, and mom in Hawaii when both of these dropped. San was quarantined with COVID (for the first time), and the rest of the members had all been put in solo hotel rooms. They were releasing all sorts of strange content like recorded zoom meetings and 3 hour vlives (back when vlives were a thing).
And the thing I remember most clearly is going to the hotel lobby and talking to one of my closest friends--an Army--and telling her how we hadn't reached 1 million views in 24 hours on Dreamers. She was shocked--I was shocked--Twitter was shocked. Shocked and upset. But we consoled ourselves saying things like 'well it dropped without warning' and 'Summer Taste will be better because it won't be just atinys streaming! It'll be monbebe and fearless streaming too!'
But, alas, no one was to stream Summer Taste.
Which is fine. It's all fine.
But I say all of this to set the stage for Summer Taste's arrival into the world. Stream-tiny were already upset about the low views on Dreamers, and two days later, we had equally low views on a second music video that was also basically a commercial. So there was a lot of hand-wringing and fretting about The State of the Fandom.
Had ATEEZ not gotten any boost from Kingdom? Had they lost fans? What would happen to future sponsorship deals if these are the views they can bring in?
And two years later, this same fretting and hand-wringing is still happening, albeit in slightly different forms. Like when a member releases a solo song on YouTube, they drop any new content, and even when a Japanese MV releases. But at the time of this song's release, this was one of the first commercial deals ATEEZ had had--so it was all very new.
And amidst all of this fighting about whether anyone was watching ATEEZ's commercial, there hung an even bigger question: is it even any good?
And my answer is yes. To me, Summer Taste has always been exactly what it was supposed to be: a fun commercial that makes me want to drink Pepsi. When I hear the song I smile, which I assume is what the makers of Pepsi want from me.
The 'what's up? what's up? what's up? what's up?' at the start makes me laugh every single time. Hongjoong's rap, which again, he wrote, is great and catchy, and the way it transitions to Monsta X's I.M. is excellent. And I am very much in love with Yunho's high note because I am a sucker for high notes. Even the styling is that perfect blend of Malibu beach party and early 90's.
Please, watch the commercial and try to not have fun.
It is a fantastic commercial for Pepsi--catchy and bright and everything you could possibly want someone to associate with your product. But there was a sect of people who were upset that it wasn't a fantastic, award winning song, which... is hard to know how to respond to even two years later. It's like what I tell my son about eating his dinner, "You don't always get to eat the best meal of your life."
Summer Taste was never going to be the best song in ATEEZ's discography. How could it be when only two members participated on it? But it is a fun song that serves it's purpose well. And for me, I'll always remember driving up and down the coast with 'what's up? what's up? what's up?' and 'we're so danger' blasting from our speakers.
And in this household, Pepsi will always be both the taste of Korea and the taste of summer.
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