I have to admit, I stumbled across this group and song inadvertently. Truthfully, though, I think that’s what makes this discovery so incredible.
One afternoon, I opened my YouTube Music app to adjust my playlist. I was brought to the homepage, where YouTube’s algorithm often tries to recommend songs by groups I don’t particularly care for or whose styles of music I don’t enjoy. I rarely take their recommendations seriously, as most of them tend to be a bust.
However, I saw a song I liked on the “New Releases” banner at the top of the homepage, catching my attention when otherwise I would immediately head to my playlist tab. Out of curiosity’s sake, I glanced over at the rest of the songs in the banner. A cool, red album cover caught my eye. The song was titled “OOMM (Out of My Mind),” by a group called 3YE. I had never heard of them before, and I decided to add the song to the queue of the playlist that was currently on. I was not prepared for what followed.
I tend to like aggressive and loud songs, so the cacophonic opening to the song already had me hooked. It’s rare to find a girl group that delivers on the quality of unabashed noise I want in a song, but already this showed promise. The song begins as a stereotypical K-pop hip-hop song with a charismatic verse. I was reminded of songs by 2NE1 with the garage instrumentals that filled the beginning of the song.
As the song builds up throughout the verse, I was fully expecting an aggressive drop the second the verse ended, but instead the song breaks into a differently-styled pre-chorus. The vocals lower to a soft whisper, each syllable clearly enunciated over a funky bass. It caught me off-guard, but it was executed so well that I couldn’t help but jam along to it. In a way, that pre-chorus reminds me of the verses in Billie Eilish’s “bad guy” with the whispery voice over a predominant bass guitar.
That pre-chorus leads into the inevitable instrumental drop for the chorus, where the 3YE members sing over an unhinged instrumental the title words to the song, “Out of my mind.” A powerful rap verse follows the first chorus. At this point of the song, I could kind of guess that this was a rookie group, considering how the vocal color of the rap seemed to be emulating other female K-pop rappers instead of being truly unique. That doesn’t mean it was poorly done— that verse is truly killer— but it harkens more to styles from other rappers than it shows off the group’s individuality.
The song repeats the verse-pre-chorus-chorus pattern after that, and then the song leads into the bridge. I can only describe the beat as having various army motifs throughout, with the singers sounding like drill sergeants issuing orders over a constant, simple instrumental. The pre-chorus and the chorus play after that, and then the song ends.
I don’t place a lot of faith in YouTube to suggest good songs to me, but they struck gold with this one. A newly-debuted girl group in 2019, 3YE shows real promise as a hip-hop trio. “OOMM” was the right kind of noise to satisfy my tastes, and I hope they keep a similar style moving forward.
Impressed with what I heard so far, I also gave their other single a listen, though it wasn’t quite my taste. Regardless, I hope they have a long career ahead of them and they can put new music out like OOMM.
3YE is on my radar now, and I’m excited to follow them throughout their releases and to learn more about the members.