FRI(END)S

The song

‘FRI(END)S’ is a digital single by V, released on 15 March 2024. It carries four tracks — the song itself, an instrumental, a sped up version and a slowed down version. The album introduction describes the song as a confession in pop soul R&B, says the words are about ending a friendship to move to something more, and adds that the title, which puts brackets around the ‘END’ in ‘FRIENDS’, holds that story in short. By the same introduction, the single follows V’s first solo album Layover by about six months.

Reviews

NME’s Rhian Daly gave the single four stars out of five on the day of release. “Friends-to-lovers is a classic trope for a reason,” she began, and set out how the song carries on from the album before it: “Sonically, the standalone single feels like a natural continuation of V’s 2023 album, ‘Layover’, without being a carbon copy of that record.” She went on: “‘Fri(end)s’ is brighter and a little more upbeat, ‘Layover’’s smoky jazz bar atmosphere all but evaporated,” adding that “the song still maintains the vintage feel of that album, though, with its waltzing time signature and soulful R&B that’s rooted in ’60s tradition.”

Of its length — a little under two and a half minutes — the same review says: “Despite those anxieties, ‘Fri(end)s’ doesn’t get bogged down in overthinking and what ifs – appropriate for a song with such a snappy runtime of just shy of two-and-a-half minutes.”

IZM’s Jang Jun-hwan went to the arrangement. He wrote that “the light meeting of bass and drums lays out a garden of traditional twentieth-century pop, and the fresh phrasing of the confession completes a love song anyone can understand at once”.