Jeon Somi’s Closer is the lead single from her latest album Chaotic & Confused and arriving on the heels of the pre-release single Extra.
Sonically, Closer picks up where Extra left off and continues to balance melancholy with catchy dance-pop. What makes the two tracks different is that Closer is about wanting to get as physically close to a lover as possible. Can longing really bring people together, or does it just make us feel the distance more?
Love, Vulnerability, and Isolation
Closer wears the trappings of a dance track with stutter-house energy and a sample of Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls. The lyrics, like “You be my oasis tonight” and “When I’m lookin’ in your eyes, I forget about time,” spin yearning into something deeper. It reveals a need for true, emotional intimacy, a longing that doesn’t end in sweet romance but in uneasy solitude.
The “Beautiful Girls” sample isn’t there to be catchy. It’s a ghost of nostalgia re-imagined. Sweet in memory, bitter in execution and Somi wrangles it into a contemporary house-techno track that feels introspective.
A Dance in Isolation
The music video mirrors that exact tension. Somi drifts through surreal, desolate spaces alone. Even when she finds herself in a room surrounded by dancers circling her, they don’t break the emotional distance. The muted, dream-like palette and AI-generated visuals like flower-like glitches, to a clone of Somi melting into chrome add to the chaos. They underscore the song’s yearning for emotional grounding.
What Closer taps into is the cost of living in an age where it feels almost impossible to forge a meaningful connection with someone. The video becomes a metaphor for grief over the disconnection in an image-driven world.
What Does It Mean?
In Closer, Jeon Somi presents longing as a beautiful trap. The familiar sample evokes nostalgia, the stutter-house structure fractures expectation, the visuals isolate beauty itself. The track doesn’t resolve longing, it amplifies it.
With Closer and Extra, Somi makes a statement. Closeness isn’t just about being near, it’s about truly being seen.
