[#45] U-Kiss - "One Of You"

From: "One Of You"
Format: Single
Released: September
Territory: Japan
Previous Best of Appearances: "Ok!" (2009) / #28 - "Baby Don't Cry" (2011)

One of this year's biggest surprises for me was the way U-Kiss' Japanese repertoire turned out -- pretty good. Re-released songs aside, the new tracks on "A Shared Dream" were really good, but still managed to keep a very U-Kiss sound throughout. That's also why I had a hard time deciding which song to feature this year, until I heard "One Of You".

"One Of You" is a very vulnerable song because so much can go wrong with it -- one wrong move and it can very well turn into an incredibly cheap song. And to a certain extent it is cheap if you're looking at the individual elements, or just the melody or just the arrangement, and not the bigger picture.

The production on this song is outstanding, really. It's also very Japanese -- it sounds very rich as a whole, very packed, but when you take the song apart the individual elements are very thin and sanitized, even.

Despite the production, "One Of You" turns out to be a very light, cheery song, of which there aren't that many anymore, so I've noticed. That's not to say that everything is bad because they're not cheery, but variety's always welcome. And in this case, it's more than welcome.

This is the type of song you'd bop your head to unconsciously, mainly because of the sharp, snappy instrumental. You'd think that the synths, the bass line and the percussion would crowd the song, but they don't, and they actually make it really light. The melody, which is gorgeous in all the right places puts some weight on the instrumental, but that's watered down by the fact that U-Kiss' vocals have always been on the thinner/lighter side.

And if there's one thing this song succeeds in, it's putting me in a good mood, because it's just so happy.