에잇 (eight)

The song

‘에잇 (eight)’ is a digital single by IU, released on 6 May 2020. The tracklist prints it as ‘에잇(Prod.&Feat. SUGA of BTS)’, with SUGA of BTS on production and featuring. It is her first release since the mini album Love poem six months earlier.

The album introduction on Bugs places the song after ‘스물셋’ and ‘팔레트’ and describes it as pop rock built on band sound. Idology (아이돌로지) reports that the composer Jang Yi-jeong, who works under the name El Capitxn and is signed to Big Hit Entertainment, took part in it as well, and notes that he and IU had once sung ‘금요일에 만나요’ together. The music video was uploaded to the 1theK (원더케이) channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM’s Hwang Seon-eop reviewed the single in May 2020 and wrote that “the artist’s own feeling still governs the whole song, but music that adds a trendy EDM sound to an acoustic rock sound makes a plainly different impression from the earlier songs in the age series”. Of the two writers working together, he wrote that “this positive synergy, which neither would have produced working alone, makes the collaboration mean more”.

Idology’s Randy gave the song a piece of its own on 24 May 2020. He called it “a song in a pop rock style, with the kick and toms struck good and clean”, and wrote that “as a matter of genre it is a new venture for IU and for SUGA of BTS, who gave her the song”. On the music and the lyric pulling in opposite directions, the same piece said that “a sound that wants to press forward meets a lyric that wants to stay in a memory, and out of it comes a strange sense of direction, circling as if unable to leave”.

Randy wrote of the layers in the writing that “a lyric like this, laid over music that sounds bright, gives multiple layers to a short song of barely two minutes fifty”. The same piece noted that sleep is a recurring subject in IU’s lyrics: “as ‘Knees’ and ‘Through the Night’ show, sleep for IU is a metaphor for an easy time, for a good state.”

Numbers

Idology chose the song for its 20 songs of 2020, published on 30 December 2020. That page says the shortlist ran to 76 songs and that “no separate ranking was calculated, and the order is alphabetical”. The entry printed there is an excerpt of Randy’s piece above.

Around it

Idology reports that IU described the song, in a behind-the-scenes video for the music video, as “a song about a listless longing that cannot move forward, that sinks into such thoughts and so keeps returning to the same place”. The same piece says she wrote in her own note on the song that if her earlier work was an essay, this one was a novel.

The pre-release single ‘Celebrity’ followed on 27 January 2021, and the fifth full-length album LILAC, which carries it, came on 25 March that year.