RAERAE REACTS · JEON SOMI · MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW

CLOSER: JEON SOMI Made Narcissism Look Like a Date Night

JEON SOMI borrowed a melody people already knew, turned it toward a woman admiring her own reflection, and then made the mirror start breathing. I like the song. The video is where things get gloriously uncomfortable.

RAERAE REACTS · K-POP

JEON SOMI borrowed a melody people already knew, turned it toward a woman admiring her own reflection, and then made the mirror start breathing. I like the song. The video is where things get gloriously uncomfortable.

The larger meaning of “CLOSER”

The lyrics are direct. Somi wants the attraction, the music, the hands at her waist, and one more kiss. She is not waiting to be selected from across the room. She asks to be called beautiful and behaves as if the answer has already arrived.

That sounds simple until you hear what the production is doing. “CLOSER” pulls the recognizable “Beautiful Girls” melody into a stuttering club beat. The sweetness is still there, but it keeps catching on the rhythm. It feels flirtatious and slightly unstable. Perfect. The romance is happening. So is the self-performance.

Somi told Korean press that she wanted the sampled song to carry a more confident, woman-centered message. She also called it a chance to go deeper into the dance-performance side fans already associate with her. That makes sense. The song is less about surrendering to another person than enjoying how powerful you look while getting closer to them.

Does the sample earn its place?

Mostly, yes. The melody is doing more than handing us a nostalgia coupon. “Beautiful Girls” is remembered as a male heartbreak song. Somi flips the camera. Here, the beautiful girl speaks, moves, chooses, and enjoys being looked at.

The weak point is length. At 2:38, the track gets to its hook, proves the idea, and leaves before the relationship can cause any actual trouble. A bridge could have made the sweet-and-bitter line land harder. I wanted one moment where the confidence cracked or became too much. Instead, the song stays gorgeous and controlled. That is fun. It is also a little safe for an EP called Chaotic & Confused.

The official music video

My actual first reaction

First thought: Oh, she is flirting with herself. Okay. I respect the efficiency.

Sound check: Familiar melody, clipped house rhythm, and a chorus that glides instead of exploding.

The moment I leaned in: when the beauty shots stop behaving like beauty shots and her face begins turning into a hostile little garden.

The side-eye: the AI imagery is intentionally uncanny, but intentional discomfort does not make every generated frame equally good.

Current status: added to the playlist. I am still asking the missing bridge to text me back.

Narcissism, but make it date night

Somi described the video’s center as narcissism. That is why mirrors, doubles, close-ups, and warped beauty imagery keep interrupting the romance. The love object may be another person. The visual obsession is Somi herself.

The camera gets too close on purpose. Faces bloom, stretch, duplicate, and stop following the rules of flattering idol cinematography. Somi said she wanted viewers to make an “oh!” sound and physically pull back. Honestly, mission accomplished. One second she is polished enough to sell perfume. The next second the perfume has become sentient and is growing out of her cheek.

There is a good argument that the AI effects look sloppy. Some fans hated them, and I understand why. K-pop already has enormous visual budgets and talented VFX artists. Generated distortion can feel like a shortcut. Somi’s explanation is more specific than “AI is trendy,” though. She wanted an ugliness and wrongness that conventional CG did not give her. I still judge the result frame by frame. A concept can be smart and an image can still look cheap.

What changed every time I replayed it

• The “Beautiful Girls” DNA: the credited writers include Kisean Anderson, J. R. Rotem, Sly Jordan, Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber, and Mike Stoller because the sample’s family tree reaches through Sean Kingston’s hit to “Stand by Me.”
• The mirror logic: Somi is often framed as both subject and spectator. The video keeps asking whether she wants a lover or an audience.
• Flowers on the face: beauty literally grows until it becomes grotesque. Very subtle? No. Effective? Absolutely.
• Unflattering angles: these were deliberate. Somi said she wanted to abandon the usual idol tricks and show angles that felt strange rather than merely pretty.
• The album connection: Chaotic & Confused is about the gap between being a ten-year industry veteran and a 24-year-old still learning herself. The video turns that split into multiple versions of one woman.

Credits worth knowing

Writers and composers: Jesse Bluu, Olufeyikemi Osuntokun, Zikai, TEDDY, Kisean Anderson, Jonathan Rotem, Sly Jordan, Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber, and Michael Stoller. Jesse Bluu is also credited as arranger. Josh Gudwin handled mixing.

Somi did not receive a writing credit on “CLOSER,” unlike several other tracks on the EP. Her authorship shows up more clearly in interpretation, performance, and the visual concept. That distinction matters. Being the face of an idea is not the same as writing the song, and both jobs can still be creative.

RaeRae verdict

“CLOSER” is sleek, catchy, and smarter than its short runtime initially suggests. The sample gives it instant familiarity. Somi gives it posture. The video then smears the lipstick on purpose.

I wanted a bridge and one sharper emotional turn. I did not need another chorus pretending to be depth. Still, this is one of those releases where the song gets better after the visual argument clicks into place.

RaeRae rating: 8.2/10. Beautiful, strange, and one bridge away from becoming dangerous.

Receipts

• Official “CLOSER” music videoDaily+6.6KTotal views23.8M
• Official moving-version dance practiceDaily+301Total views560.9K
• Yonhap interview on the EP, sample, and Somi’s creative direction
• iMBC interview on the MV concept and AI imagery
• Song credits and release data

Featured image uses the official JEON SOMI and THEBLACKLABEL YouTube thumbnail. Read the full JEON SOMI profile or browse more RaeRae Reacts.

The beauty image keeps mutating because confidence is not stable

The smartest visual choice is not simply making Somi beautiful and then making her strange. It is refusing to draw a clean border between those states. A polished close-up begins to bloom, duplicate or warp before the viewer can decide whether to admire it. The same face becomes product, performer, audience and threat. Narcissism here is not shorthand for a woman who likes herself too much. It is the exhausting business of producing an image, watching that image, wanting it and wondering whether it has begun to want something back.

That is why the generated effects bother me and interest me at the same time. Some frames have the waxy, unfinished quality people reasonably hate about AI imagery. The wrongness also serves a video determined to damage the smooth idol close-up. Intent does not excuse every result, but it gives us something more specific to judge than novelty. The question is whether each mutation deepens the obsession or merely announces the software. The best ones make beauty feel invasive. The weakest look like a shortcut wearing conceptual perfume.

Somi’s performance keeps the concept from becoming a technology demo

The video survives its effects because Somi never behaves like a neutral model waiting for post-production. She controls the gaze before the face begins to change. Her expression can read as invitation, self-amusement and warning inside the same shot. When the image turns grotesque, she does not suddenly switch to horror acting. That composure makes the mutation feel like an extension of the character rather than a monster interrupting her.

Her physical performance also understands the song’s scale. “CLOSER” does not need a giant climax, and Somi does not manufacture one by overselling the hook. She stretches a line, settles behind the beat and lets the camera approach. The confidence comes from deciding that proximity is inevitable. She is not begging somebody to cross the room. She is watching them realize they already have.

The missing bridge is still my complaint

The video finds complication that the song refuses to stay long enough to develop. At under three minutes, “CLOSER” presents the familiar melody, flips its point of view, locks into its stuttering groove and leaves. A bridge could have cracked the self-possession or made the attraction genuinely risky. Instead, the final return confirms what we already know. It is elegant, replayable and a little too well behaved for the title Chaotic & Confused.

I am not asking for length as a moral virtue. Plenty of four-minute songs waste a minute. I want one additional turn because the video has already planted a more dangerous question: what happens when the beautiful image you control begins controlling the encounter? Ten musically strange seconds could have let that question into the record instead of leaving the visuals to do all the troublemaking.

Bottom line

“CLOSER” turns a familiar melody into self-directed flirtation, then lets Somi’s face become the date, the mirror and the warning. The song is sleek; the video supplies the danger it forgot to write into a bridge.