With the success of their song 404, I’ve come across several live performances of theirs, and I came to the conclusion that KiiiKiii currently doesn’t have a particularly strong vocalist within the group.
Their main vocalist is Sui, but her technical foundation as a vocalist is quite lackluster. The positive is that she has a naturally clear, delicate tone that could potentially be highlighted better in a more minimalistic or acoustic style of music. The issue is that most kpop songs aren’t really arranged for that type of vocal archetype. Her range is very limited for someone in a typical main vocalist position, her falsetto is shaky, and she’s prone to pitch breaks whenever she’s pushed even slightly outside of her comfortable range. Her vibrato also doesn’t appear to be developed yet. Another thing I noticed is that she seems very uncomfortable singing in English. Her mouth movements and tongue placements become noticeably awkward, which ends up affecting her diction and overall vocal stability. With how much English is incorporated into kpop songs nowadays, this is going to be an area she’ll need to improve.
Kya has gotten a lot of attention during this 404 era for her charismatic lower tone. She’s easily the most consistent member in the group imo. Even when she raised the key during her part in an encore stage, it still sounded relatively stable. The caveat here is that her parts in the song don’t require much actual singing. It’s mostly talk-singing for the lack of a better phrase. However, I’ve heard her sing on other platforms before and she does seem like someone who has room to grow. She’s capable of producing different vocal textures, but she doesn’t seem to have strong control over dynamics yet. Also, when she’s singing songs with a more complex rhythm, she showed underdevelopment in her sense of rhythmic expression and timing. To me, ger biggest strength is her low to mid-range, but she relies heavily on a nasal placement that can sound a bit overbearing. In the live stages of 404 (not the studio version), she tends to block all airflow through her nasal passage when delivering her lines. Some seem to like it, but to me it makes her sound quite muffled and congested.
For Haum, she lacks technique and foundation in all aspects. It also doesn’t seem like she has much confidence when she sings. The keyword here is singing, not rapping. Anytime there are actual melodic lines she needs to carry, her projection becomes noticeably weaker. I’m also not sure why the producer gave Haum the pre-chorus part of 404, because she clearly struggles to replicate the studio version of that part live, especially since it relies on a head voice placement she doesn’t seem comfortable with. There isn’t much else to say about Haum vocally because it doesn’t sound like she has ever received extensive vocal training.
Jiyu, to me, is essentially a slightly more stable version of Haum. Her pitch can still be quite unstable in many of the stages I’ve seen, but I do like her natural tone. Similar to the other members though, she seems to lack the basic vocal foundations that would allow her to sing more consistently in live settings.
Leesol is probably the weakest vocalist in the group, but since she’s the designated rapper of the group, I’d give her a pass.
Having good songs but not being able to perform them to their full potential live because of limited vocal capability can be very disappointing. Concept is great and all but I want vocals to be taken a bit more seriously in kpop. Because right now, I don’t think KiiiKiii has a single good vocalist in the group.
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