I'LL LIKE YOU - EP

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I'LL LIKE YOU - EP

Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2024

ILLIT

Girl-group rookies ILLIT returned in late 2024 with I’LL LIKE YOU, a five-track follow-up to their debut EP SUPER REAL ME. The latter included the fleet-footed pop magic of “Magnetic,” one of the breakout K-pop singles of 2024, and I’LL LIKE YOU is constructed to continue the TikTok virality while also building the young group’s dreamy discography of bubbly young-love songs.

In a debut year where ILLIT’s debut single perhaps broke out more than the group itself, single “I’ll Like You” explicitly calls to mind the group’s name, a moniker that is constructed for fans to choose their own verb to place between “I’ll” and “it.” A slight track in both length and construction, “I’ll Like You” invites listeners into the teen girls’ pop-youth perspective on innocent attraction: “When I look at you/The world is in a moment, filter mode on.”

In “Cherish (My Love),” the theme of a willful young love continues, starting with the lulling declaration, “You know what?/Not even god can stop me/I'll like you,” before building to the stuttering delivery of the song’s catchy “ch, ch, ch, ch, cherish my love” chorus. Meanwhile, “IYKYK (If You Know You Know)” doubles down on new-gen K-pop’s habit of spelling out acronymic English-language internet slang—this time in service of further expressing the album’s central theme of “falling in like”: “This feels like sunshine/That sweet smile.”

Acne has never sounded as romantic as it does on “Pimple,” a hazy pop song that uses the metaphor of a zit to express the sweet agony of developing an unexpected crush: “Little pimple/One day suddenly/Pimple sprouts/It stings, it’s you.” On the energetically onomatopoeic album closer “Tick-Tack,” ILLIT brings listeners into the sounds of a like: “Oh, oh my god/You're looking at me again/The coolest mode, click, click!”). The song and album have members Yunah, Minju, Moka, Wonhee, and Iroha signing off with an abrupt “Oh, nice to see ya,” just as dreamily casually as they came.

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