Music / ODD EYE CIRCLE

L-R: Kim Lip, JinSoul, Choerry

ODD EYE CIRCLE is a South Korean girl group. They debuted in 2017 as a sub-unit of the then-upcoming group LOONA. Following the LOONA members' high-profile legal dispute with their company BlockBerry Creative (which each member won in 2023), ODD EYE CIRCLE transferred to the company Modhaus. They released their first mini-album in five years, Version Up, in July 2023.

They are also a part of Modhaus' project called ARTMS, which includes fellow LOONA ex-members HeeJin and HaSeul. Jaden Jeong, former creative director of LOONA, is the CEO of Modhaus.

ARTMS now have their own page.

Members:

• Kim Lip (1999) - Leader
• JinSoul (1997)
• Choerry (2001) - Maknae

Tropes

Tropes relating to their songs and music videos

• Action Girl: Kim Lip singlehandedly and successfully brawls with a bunch of men in "Air Force One."
• He's Back!:
  • What "Air Force Once" is about lyrically, burning the old Converse-brand shoes they were associated with in favor of the more grandiose Air Force One brand, as a metaphor for their triumphant return from seeming dissolution after leaving Blockberry.
  • "Did You Wait?", the group's intro for their <Version Up> album, does this in musical form, sampling snippets of three prior songs from their discography before switching to a new, unknown song, confirming without words that ODD Eye Circle are back after six years.
• Lovable Rogue: In "Air Force One," the girls break into a fancy dinner and wreak havoc. They even steal a crown from the queen. But they're still clearly the heroes.
• Melismatic Vocals: A lot of these in their debut EP Mix and Match and its reissue Max and Match, particularly because the songs were heavily R&B-influenced. Less so on Version Up, but it's still there.
• Mood Dissonance: Most of their singles are love songs, but the music videos feature complex symbolism and scenes that have nothing to do with the lyrics. For example, "Air Force One" features a flirtatious-sounding "Step by step, boy" in the chorus but there's nothing remotely romantic going on in the music video.
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: Defied and Inverted in "Girl Front." Lyrically, the song is about the girl pursuing the guy first.
• Queer Romance: "Je Ne Sais Quoi" is a love song addressed to a nameless lady, written and sung by women.^note Park Sohyun, a member of Modhaus' other big girl group project tripleS, participated in writing the lyrics, to which she used fellow group member Kim Nakyoung as an inspiration.
  Baby, you're like chocolate
  Sweet, wrapped in foil
  You're the only one who doesn’t know
  Lady, you're that being
  You color what's around you[...]
  Your attraction
  The flower of emotion called love
  I don’t know what
  Allow my heart please
  I wanna approach you
• Shout-Out:
  • "Air Force One," the title of their comeback single in 2023, is also the name of shoes sold by Nike.
  • "My Secret Playlist" is chock-full of shout-outs to other songs, such as "Say So" by Doja Cat and "High and Dry" by Radiohead. In fact, it's the whole premise of the song.
• Silly Love Songs: They have released mainly love songs in their career.
• Super Team: In the lore, each member has a different superpower. Although never outright confirmed what they are, it appears that Kim Lip's powers have something to do with super speed, JinSoul can freeze objects (and sometimes people), and Choerry can travel through different dimensions.
• Time Stands Still: Freezing time seems to be JinSoul's superpower, as demonstrated in "Singing in the Rain," "Why Not," and "Air Force One."
• Took a Level in Badass: Choerry, whose power is dimensional travel and which is represented by the truck the girls are riding in, can now use her power while fully awake. Previously, she was only able to do this when unconscious, as demonstrated by "Love Cherry Motion" and "Sweet Crazy Love".
• A Wild Rapper Appears!: JinSoul and, to a lesser extent, Choerry in their debut EP. However, neither JinSoul nor Choerry rap in Version Up, with JinSoul in particular doing heavy-duty work as the lead vocalist.

Miscellaneous

• Bowdlerise: A completely justified example when OEC covered "Say So" by Doja Cat on their Europe tour. They removed the N word on each performance, which is understandable because Doja Cat is half-Black but none of the OEC members are Black at all.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Kim Lip is red, JinSoul is blue, and Choerry is purple. Although their promotional materials at Modhaus have been a lot more liberal with color, the trio used their respective assigned colors for some of their costumes during their Europe tour in 2023.
• Product Displacement: A funny example when OEC were promoting their title track "Air Force One" on music shows. Air Force 1 is a product by Nike, so they had to change the title to nonsensical phrases, like "Air Pulse One" (which Orbits quickly found to be the name of a vibrator) and "Air Girls One."