In my quaint college town, I frequented a Southeast Asian restaurant that made phenomenal pho. While I found the food to be truly good, I discovered this place far too late in my academic career. This was primarily due to me never noticing the place until a friend dragged me there and physically pointed out the building, which is among the dingiest hole-in-the-walls I've encountered in my epicurean adventures. The amenities were minimal, at best, and the only advertising was through word of mouth. But the pho was incredibly good, so I continued to dine frequently despite my reservations towards the place. Throughout my visits, I slowly grew fond of the place and developed a sense of hope that this place would eventually get the rest of the packaging other than the food right to show off their truly wonderful creation.

Sunny Days is the K-Pop equivalent to that restaurant.

If you're not familiar with Sunny Days to any extent, I honestly can't blame you. A product of little known Ha Eun Entertainment, the group has received little to no promotion whatsoever in any form of K-Pop-related media. In fact, even allkpop has only three relevant articles about the group, one simply being a collection of performances from a KBS 'Music Bank' program. Furthermore, there was not even a single mention of the newest release, "Glory Korea", a digital single that was released to an underwhelming response a little over a week ago from the writing of this review. This lack of promotion is almost phenomenal, to say the least. To say that this group has been hiding under a rock from the rest of the K-Pop world would almost be an understatement.

I personally only became acquainted with the group and this release when I came across an article concerning idols singing for the South Korean athletes of the upcoming Olympics, where the group was briefly mentioned. Piqued by their patriotic, summer-based aegyo present on their album cover, I listened to the two songs that composed their second digital release 'Glory Korea'. The obviously display of patriotism on the album cover and the general themes of the lyrics clearly demonstrated that the group utilized this Olympic athlete performance opportunity as an outlet to promote their 'comeback' release. I hesitate to use the term 'comeback' due to their sheer lack of promotion, but technically it is their second digital release, following their first digital single 'Take Away', released in May 2012.



If I were an athlete about to represent South Korea in the Olympics, and the performance of the headline track 'Glory Korea' was one of the acts that was bestowed upon me before I left for London, I would have seriously questioned the respect that my country had towards me on a number of levels. I likely would have become depressed too, and failed at my event after hearing this supposed patriotic, pump-up anthem. I say this because 'Glory Days' is easily is among the weakest tracks I've heard from K-Pop in quite some time. And this is coming from someone who thinks a good amount of K-Pop is banal and over-recycled pop music of the lowest form.

OK, so maybe I over-exaggerated to some degree, but this is honestly a terrible song in nearly every respect.

The musical background of this song consists primarily of a guitar duo. One is an over-distorted thrash metal guitar, performing a stereotypical driving rhythm alternating between muted and brief open chords that is found in many teenage punk-based songs. The other guitar is supposedly a compliment to this, as it attempts to give the song a sense of harmony by playing high-pitch, elongated chord tones over the driving rhythm. The duo between these is bland and uninspiring; a nine year old who aspires to be in a rock band could likely muster up the same musical talent.

The lyrics don't help the already poor musical cause of the song. The lyrics consist of the band members blatantly telling it's audience the following things: fight hard for your dream, believe in your dreams, and you have to do these in order to win. Very little more is present than these basic words. These attempted messages of inspiration are coupled between unison shouts of the phrase "Let's go". These words compromise about forty-percent of the entire lyrics in the song and further exposes the lack of any creativity or work that went into the song writing. The lyrics confirm that this song was made specifically for the inspiring the Olympic athletes, but the lack of any originality or honest meaning makes the lyrics ultimately ineffective.



The second track on the release 'One Step Closer' is the stereotypical ballad filler. And when I say stereotypical, I honestly mean that. There is nothing in here that remotely speaks of any originality. It almost seems that the writers purposely took a pre-recorded track and melody structure, chopped it up to take out any compositional interest whatsoever, and placed 'Glory Days' song lyrics onto it. Seriously, this song is reiterating the exact same "inspiring" message the pervious track attempted to do. It's almost as if the producers already knew that the previous material wasn't strong to begin with, because of what was already discussed, and tried to extend it in a slightly different musical style to try to get a message across. I would argue that this song is the weaker of the two; at least the former was upbeat.

Looking at this review so far, one could easily question why this release is being reviewed in the first place, for it's not a well-known group and the entire packaging is really very poor. Though if we were to go back to my original pho restaurant reference, we can see that while there was much wrong with that packaging, the actual product hidden under everything is worth raving about. Despite the many, many faults found in the release of 'Glory Days', there is something incredibly positive that we can take from it.

These girls can sing. I mean really sing. From what I've listened to and compared with other artists, these girls easily have more overall vocal talent than just about every new artist that has debuted within the recent months. While this release isn't the greatest outlet for their skills to be flashed, we can hear that the group is making the best of what we're given. Their voices are evidently all equally powerful and trained properly; no noticeable effects were used to alter their voices. The member Sunkyung, who has demonstrated her vocal talent in a viral practice video, continues to display her husky, yet sultry, voice without fail here.

It bothers me to a high degree that their managers can't hire a talented enough of a production team to make full use of the rare talent that Sunny Days possesses. What I wouldn't give to see them paired up with a competent production team, like the ones for such artists as Ailee, Davichi, or Brown Eyed Girls, to name a few. The material they are forced to present at this point does them no justice, and will ultimately hurt them in the long run. What could be a group that is worth talking about remains to be a group that gets as little attention as a K-Pop group could ever hope to receive. They're not even considered a flash in the pan.

While I honestly wouldn't recommend you to listen to this release, I hope that you will keep this group in your distant memory. The actual product—the musicians—are truly outstanding. Should they ever release any further music, I pray that their management company get something right and not only promotes this group, but gives them an outlet that properly exposes the talents of this gem of a vocal group.

Regardless of my opinions, let us hope that the Olympics this year is another success. While this group's release for this special occasion may be be a poor way to start, I'm sure this isn't a completely ominous sign. I wish all the luck I can give to each athlete who represents their home country. To London.

Rating Overview

Pros: They can sing...really, they can; performing for Olympic athletes.

Cons: Terrible and banal songs, cheesy lyrics, poor production, no promotion of the group, music not allowing for vocalists to show off talent, weak anthem to inspire athletes.



What are your thoughts on Sunny Days 'Glory Korea'? Leave an honest rating and your thoughts in the comments below.

Note: this article does not reflect the opinions of allkpop, only the author.