In her latest MV Eyes Closed, Jisoo was exceptional as the comely prop and the middling voice

It’s always good to see and hear what reigning K-pop stars are doing to ensure that the genre’s future is as brilliant as its present. These days, however, we’re pushing pop icons whose musical output refuses to push back. Jisoo (aka Kim Ji-soo) has just released her new duet with Brit act Zayn Malik, Eyes Closed. Before we continue, BLINKs and Directioners are best advised not to read on to save themselves from terminal outrage. Their fans are unsurprisingly convinced that this is the “collab of the century”. A collaboration, certainly, but let’s leave the century out of it. Eyes Closed isn’t a step forward—it’s a sidestep. To be sure, the song’s music video is sleekly made, with all the CGI that consumers would expect and the coupling that produced zero thermal energy, but it did ask crucial questions: why release something so emotionally inert, so strategically safe, in a time that demands artistic clarity?

We saw the MV just hours after it was released yesterday. Eyes Closed is open to one thing: immaculate futility. The song and its attendant video are polished to the point of sterility: sleek production, vague futurism, moody visuals, high fashion, and a duet that feels algorithmically engineered for global reach. It’s the kind of track that checks every box, but leaves many hearts untouched, ours included. Watching it on YouTube, it made us want to switch to a documentary on the life cycle of dust mites. Microscopic arachnids, at least, are authentically alive. What Jisoo and her partner-in-crime have allowed themselves to submit to is more manufactured pop—music that feels like a brand extension rather than an emotional offering. Their first collab is not a rupture, not a reinvention, not even a provocation. It’s a placement—a track designed to exist, not to insist.

As Jisoo is heralded as one of the most fashionable women in the world, a claim that remains a triumph of corporate sponsorship over personal choice, the video has to be a manifesto on fashion. She appeared as a space tourist, firstly in a hypersleep pod as she embarked on a mach-bending ascent to Saturn, completely togged for a possible Grammy afterparty. We didn’t see much of her dress, except that it was worn in a luxurious coffin. We registered the ‘Comet’ necklace that she wore from the Barcelona-based brand MAM. When she was finally out and about, she did not appear to suffer from weightlessness. She undulated in a black Balmain mini dress with exaggerated hips—a sort-of-pannier that re-contextualises historical bodily forms for artistic expression. And then later, in a silver Dior dress (with Tom Ford’s hands all over it) that could have come out of the now-defunct Studio 54.

That the dresses were product placements was expected since she had to wear something, especially for the elite form of travel. This was, after all, not Lauren Sanchez and her guests on a Blue Origin flight. More unprecedented was the appearance of the Google Pixel 10. She did not have the smartphone with her to check a message or two; she showed off the device’s AI capabilities in a manner more obvious than a hippo in a tutu. By now she was changed to the Dior, presumably to disembark, like first ladies. In one take, she snapped the approaching Saturn and asked, using voice recognition: “What planet is that?” Now, much has been said that Jisoo is the least intellectually blessed among the Blackpink four. Did the narrative have to prove it by having Gemini show she needed to be informed, “that’s Saturn, famous for its rings” or a time for Astronomy 101? And did a music video require a line that felt scripted for a tech demo for 7-year-olds?

To understand the many opportunities Jisoo and her team missed, one only has to look at the earlier release by her bandmate, Rosé, who offered a definitive, visceral counter-example. Rosé’s collaboration with Bruno Mars on APT was a global phenomenon because it embraced creative authenticity, tangible performance, and songwriting verve. The track itself is a genuine alt-rock banger, lauded by critics for being “addictively catchy” because it rooted its rhythmic energy in a piece of shared Korean culture: the popular drinking game apateu. This cultural anchor was charmingly rendered in the MV, which showed Rosé and Mars actively playing around and visibly enjoying the moment. Where Eyes Closed demands passive admiration for its immaculate, high-art aesthetics and two leads as comfortable with each other as a duo forced to share a single earbud, APT coaxed active participation and demonstrated a commitment to spontaneous artistic expression. The juxtaposition is stark: Rosé’s work insists; Jisoo’s merely exists.

These days, when every release is a rollout, every lyric a caption, and every collaboration a market strategy, it’s easy to feel like the soul’s been traded for metrics—and it has. Eyes Closed is without doubt conceived to sell, but between the song’s lyrical theme and the visual execution of the music video is a gulf measurable in light-years. Perhaps the nebula-quiet centre of the disappointment is Jisoo’s voice. It isn’t bad, but it’s middling in the most literal sense: emotionally flat, dynamically restrained, and sonically overshadowed by Zayn Malik’s textured delivery. Is it a wonder that it has been said she effectively buried her distinct tone as a “backing vocal” to Mr Malik? Eyes Closed is a duet about forbidden intimacy. The vocal needs to tremble, hesitate, crack. Jisoo’s delivery is too polished to feel dangerous or tender. The entire video doesn’t just feel emotionally vacant; it feels like symptoms of a larger condition: the imposition of product placements and, worse, the industrialization of feeling. Let’s lay it lucidly: Eye Closed is not this season’s APT.

Screen shots: jisooandzayn/YouTube