[#16] SHINee - "Alarm Clock"

From: "Sherlock"
Format: EP
Released: March
Territory: South Korea
Previous Best of Appearances: #2 - "Lucifer" (2010)

Honestly, while I think "Sherlock" is a pretty good song, catchy with fantastic production, I really wasn't all over the idea of the split songs (or that it's a hybrid, whichever way it's supposed to be) on the album. However, I still got a gem out of the EP, which is good enough.

The first time I heard "Alarm Clock", it was really the melody that struck me. It's gorgeous -- gentle at the verses and intense at the choruses, but always graceful. And those bridges, those gorgeous (but very short) bridges really do act as bridges between the very light verses and the very heavy choruses by kind of skipping along. There's force to it, but at the same time there's like a spring to the step of the melody. And you see that springiness in the chorus, it's just that it's tempered by the weight of SHINee's vocals -- which I like too.

But it's not just the melody that makes this song good, even if it does steal a lot of the spotlight. The arrangement brings out all these very whimsical-sounding instruments -- everything from the synths to all the little bells and whistles that go on behind the melody. They give the song some character, which at this point is really important because of the intensity of the melody, coupled with the weight of the vocal treatment.

What I like the most about "Alarm Clock" though is that it's very SHINee, very young and trendy, but at the same time it's a slightly more mature than the stuff on "SHINee World". There's a part of me that really can't separate SHINee from their former role as SM's youngest boy band, even with EXO around now, but this song is slowly moving them away from that. Slowly.