**NewJeans — *2nd EP 'Get Up'* | Review**
In July 2022, NewJeans arrived without warning. A single surprise release, "Attention," was enough to rewrite the grammar of K-pop. Where the genre had long favoured dense, maximalist sound, the group chose space; where peers competed on individual star power, they offered collective atmosphere; where others sought to overwhelm, they chose to drift. It was, to put it simply, a revelation. Their second EP, *Get Up*, released a year later, shows just how much brighter that light can burn. The short answer: bright enough to blind you. That is why this album earns four stars.
Six tracks. Seventeen minutes. The record is brief, and all the more concentrated for it. The opening track, "New Jeans," serves as a prologue for everything that follows. Over an Afro-house rhythm, the members' voices settle lightly — no straining, no forcing. The restraint is the point. From this single track, the listener intuits the temperature at which the whole album will run.
"Super Shy" is the EP's most explosive moment. Breakbeat rhythms fill the negative space while the melody loops back with an addictive insistence. Few K-pop songs have captured the particular giddiness of shyness in the presence of someone you like with such precision. It lingers long after the final bar. "ETA," built on a drum-and-bass framework, features lyrics co-written by Korean rapper Bewhy (Beenzino). It is the most urban and razor-edged track on the record. The choice to use this genre to articulate the impatience of a woman waiting for a perpetually late boyfriend is exactly the kind of lateral thinking that defines NewJeans. Every lyric has a sharp edge.
"Cool With You" pulls the temperature down with a deep-house foundation. Self-assurance and ease coexist here in a way that reveals just how finely NewJeans handle emotional register. It is the quietest of the three title tracks, yet the one most likely to linger. The title track proper, "Get Up," raises the energy again with a dubstep base, before "ASAP" closes the record on its most experimental note — produced by Smerz, a Norwegian electronic duo. Ending seventeen minutes with a track this adventurous is a bold editorial choice, and it pays off.
The album's greatest achievement is precisely this: within seventeen minutes, it moves through Afro-house, breakbeat, deep house, drum and bass, dubstep, and electronica, yet maintains an unbroken sense of identity. The genre shifts, but the NewJeans texture does not. That texture is defined by restraint, by space, by allowing atmosphere to lead the music — the precise opposite of what K-pop has practised for decades. It works. More than works: it has set a new standard for the genre. The Korean Music Awards' decision to award the group Best K-pop Album is vindication enough.
The record is not without its single reservation. Individual members remain submerged within the group's collective mood. In "Super Shy," it is difficult to distinguish who is singing; in "ETA," no single voice breaks clearly from the rest. This appears to be a deliberate artistic strategy, but it is also the album's only missed opportunity. Had each member been allowed to emerge a little more distinctly, *Get Up* would be chasing five stars rather than four.
Even so, *Get Up* is dazzling. Rather than dimming the shock of that first NewJeans encounter in 2022, this EP sharpens it. The title of this review is no exaggeration: seventeen minutes is all it takes to lose your hearing entirely.
★★★★☆ (4.0/5.0)
In a word: "Proof that seventeen minutes can be blinding — and that such brightness carries consequences."