Life's Too Short

The song

‘Life’s Too Short’ is a single aespa released on 24 June 2022. It carries the English version and an instrumental. It follows the first mini album Savage of 2021, and the song was carried again two weeks later by the second mini album Girls, released on 8 July 2022.

The album introduction on Bugs calls it the group’s first English single and says the song was performed at the Coachella festival in the United States that April, before the release. The same text describes it as a mid-tempo pop track carried by a guitar riff and a bright vocal.

Reviews

Son Min-hyeon of IZM read the song alongside the single before it. He wrote that “if ‘Illusion’, released to announce the return, was the aespa classic, with electronic sound and a chic rap at the front, then ‘Life’s too short’ — the first English single, performed before release at this year’s Coachella festival — sets its pace with a graceful pop melody”.

Of the arrangement, the same review says that the song “lays a choir-like chorus and a clear high register over a spare guitar riff and, as befits a group of several nationalities, whispers fluent foreign speech, wrapping the running time sweetly”. Of the lyrics Son wrote that “stepping out of the tightly built universe for a moment, they state plainly their intention to enjoy a short life without minding the jeers of the commenters hiding behind a phone screen”, and closed: “a sweet warning that only aespa gives, and the blade hidden inside it has been sharpened to an edge.”

Clash covered Girls, the mini album that carries the song, in a review by Abbie Aitken. She wrote that “‘Life’s too short’ is an anthem of self-assurance. A commentary on the online community and trolling”, and that “being aespa’s debut English-language song, it trickles away from the sci-fi sounding tracks we are used to and instead begins with a simple guitar riff”.

Rolling Stone names the song, with ‘Illusion’, as one of the two pre-released singles on Girls, and in Kristine Kwak’s review sets it beside the B-side ‘ICU’, writing that the same themes of self-care and mental health can be found in it.

Around it

The music video went up on the official SMTOWN channel on the day of release. Idology did not cover the song in either of its two ‘Monthly’ columns on the releases of June 2022.