Was working on this while NMIXX dropped a rap-only song just to mock me but have it regardless.

Disclaimer: I am no vocal expert, have just taken vocal lessons for a few years and thought I'd share some observations I've made about each member and also indirectly explain why NMIXX are so special to me lol. Would welcome any criticism/thoughts/etc!

For each girl, I've chosen one performance that I feel showcases what they are capable of. I don't really believe in vocal rankings so I haven't done them, but I'm going from who I consider the "weakest" to "strongest" singer and briefly highlight their strengths and weaknesses.

(6) Bae

Representative performance: Flower

Strengths: Style, Tone, Phrasing

Weaknesses: Stability, Projection, Pitch, Range

Bae is a vocalist who has improved a lot since her debut, and you can tell she has worked really hard on getting her vocals up to scratch.

Bae is what we would typically call a stylistic singer, in that in addition to the tone that she has, she also sings in a certain style (concentrating her airflow closer to her nose than with a more balanced style). However, because of Bae working on her technique, she is a stylistic singer who avoids sounding too nasal. That gives her the ability to deliver really pretty phrases including of course her iconic line in dash.

Out of everyone in the team, Bae struggles the most with maintaining good projection while dancing. If you click into any fancam from NMIXX's raw "live" performances (ie little to no backtrack), you'll notice a sudden dip in volume every time Bae sings. IMO, that is the weakness that puts her a little behind everyone else for now but is something that you can see she is working on. For eg, you can see how much she's improved from 2023 to 2024 for her part in Love Me Like This (you can hear how much cleaner and less tense the endings of her higher notes are). Honestly, the speed she has been improving at is one which we actually don't typically expect from people with schedules as busy as theirs.

Lastly, Bae has a few pitch problems (can be heard in the recording behinds as well) but they're nothing serious and usually are corrected once she's had a couple of bats at the line.

(5) Jiwoo

Representative Performance: Dark Clouds

Strengths: Projection, Stability, Pitch

Weaknesses: Placement, Range

Jiwoo is on the other hand in my opinion a mirror image of Bae. If you put on any NMIXX performance, she is usually the loudest one that you can hear every single time. She is also very consistent, to the point where she has had lots of comments on how her Dash and LMLT parts sound exactly like the studio version. In other words, Jiwoo is a very consistent and stable vocalist and her ability to project on lower notes is actually up there with Lily's.

However, she has a very limited vocal range still and struggles a bit with more complex melodies – this is the same run that she sometimes nails and sometimes really does not on live stages, and extends generally to anything higher or lower than her more limited range. On the other hand, where Jiwoo is comfortably in her vocal range and has to tackle simple melodies, she again becomes unbelievably stable and introduces texture into her vocal performance. IMO, from watching Jiwoo sing in their impromptu karaoke sessions, Jiwoo's main barrier is actually confidence and placement – if she can achieve a more rounded sound and dare to just sing, she could be improving very fast because she has an intuitive grasp of the fundamentals.

(4) Kyujin

Representative Performance: First Day

Strengths: Pitch!!!!, Placement, Stability, Musicality

Weaknesses: Mixed voice, Range

Kyujin is a marvel of a singer in my opinion and here is why. At 18 years old she is starting to implement interesting adlibs in live performances, is capable of clean, tension-less belts (see First Day above), and in general just shows up each time to give a good performance. Just like Jiwoo, she is completely stable when performing even though she has to carry more complex vocal melodies. You'll never catch her going off pitch even in very difficult vocal melodies and she's generally only a little sharp or a little flat when she's dancing 100 miles a minute.

However, the reason why I've put her below Sullyoon is due to her less developed mixed voice. We have all seen that video of Sullyoon singing that song to insanely high keys – Kyujin is not yet able to do this because she hasn't developed the ability to pull her chest voice (in simple terms, the usually louder and more solid sounding voice) up to such high registers and has to "switch" to a lighter head voice for higher registers. I am sort of insanely excited to see how she grows vocally in the coming years.

(3) Sullyoon

Representative Performance: Stay

Strengths: Tone, Texture, Range, Musicality

Weaknesses: Pitch, Heavy Placement, Stability

What to say about Sullyoon… Firstly, Stay is not an easy song at all to pull off, which is why I've picked it. I want to first show off some of my favourite Sullyoon performances: Love Like Oxygen, 8282, POV, Monster, ITNW, Waiting, the list goes on and on. In a way, Sullyoon's strengths vocally are self-explanatory, she is always super lovely to listen to, has an amazing, rich tone, and can really sing. Sullyoon is my personal favourite singer from a group that I really adore, which is no mean feat.

So for me, it's easier to talk specifically about her weaknesses: pitch and a very chest-heavy placement. Because Sullyoon seems to have sung this way her whole life, she is able (as in the Lee Mujin clip linked above) to bring her chest voice up very high such that she can push through notes that should be sung more lightly for her personal vocal health. This is the reason why she tends to go noticeably flat at her part in LMLT – at some point, when you're fighting some insane choreo and fatigue, you're not able to summon enough ab strength to force the note out. We see this a lot also in the climax of Dice for the uni festival circuit, where it's a roll of the dice whether she'll be able to hit the three climbing notes. For Sullyoon, the solution is simple but also very difficult because by now the way she hits high notes must be habitual, the same way it is for Lily (will discuss this further down) – she needs to lighten her mix in the higher notes and bring in more of her head voice. Until then, she won't be able to catch up with:

(2) Haewon

Representative Performance: Tomboy

Strengths: Tone, Texture, Range, Musicality, Versality, Range

Weaknesses: Fear/Lack of confidence/Fatigue, Head Voice

Haewon is a really really really good singer in all senses of the word. She loves music enough that it is not mechanical at all for her, but at the same time she loves it enough that she carefully plans out how she wants to sing each song. In my opinion, Haewon's greatest strength is the fact that she is technically excellent (pitch is good, very agile, healthy singing technique) and insanely versatile. While she can definitely belt, like really, she can also very delicately take apart a song. She can even do musicals! She is also remarkably stable even when doing high knees, which is actually just insane. She can also go lower a little more comfortably than Lily can (this is part of a 2 hour long video where she bodies every single song she covers).

So again, like Sullyoon, in a way it's easier to be specific about her weaknesses, and her weakness is a lack of daring. Take her duet with Ailee (Wildflower) – you can see how she does a very weird choice to switch from a nice chest mix (loud and solid) to a very heavy head voice (light and less solid) mix right before the climax. The impact of the would-be belt is gone, and Ailee ends up overpowering her in the chorus. The same thing happens here in deja vu where at the climax where Olivia Rodrigo usually sits into a belt, she falls back onto a very head voice heavy mix or possibly just pure head voice. This could be due to fatigue or possibly regression (due again to fatigue/overwork), or it could be a lack of confidence. Either way, I hope she can let go of this one thing holding her back because she would otherwise be such a complete musician. And for the record, she can belt up there.

(1) Lily

Representative Performance: Skinny

Strengths: Projection, Stability, Pitch, Musicality, Range, Texture, Agility

Weaknesses: Placement

I put together a list of vocal performances which I think are a showcase of Lily's richer tone safe from the irresponsibly high notes that SQU4D sometimes makes her do, although she still does them well. Like she will hit that fawking note. She will also do that fawking run.

To me, Lily is not just a once in a generation (4th gen) kind of singer but a once in all-gens kind of singer and the reason is her stability in live performances. I can't think of many performances where I've heard her go off script, even at her sickest (though my very controversial opinion is that Kyujin is actually a little bit more pitch-accurate than Lily). Lily's ability to belt out perfect phrases while dancing like crazy reminds me of Luna from F(X), who was another completely unusual vocalist the likes of which we have rarely seen since. She is also in a way a mirror image to Haewon, who has stronger lows – Lily has a healthy head voice and the ability to bring her chest voice up high so she can sing like this.

Now for the elephant in the room: Lily's tone. The following is just my view and I'm very open to being corrected on it, but here's what I think: Lily is being asked to hit very high notes that she can reach but which she habitually defaults to a placement that makes the note sound "sharper" to reach. Listen to some notes in 8282 and here again: you won't really hear the "sharper" character that is usually associated with Lily's O.O high note because they are not so far out of her comfortable range that she has to push them in a way that makes them sound "sharp". If she is able to round the notes out a bit more with the proper placement, she could potentially mitigate this issue and produce more "pleasant" sounding notes up there in the atmosphere.

As it is now, though, I think we can all enjoy Lily's seat at the top of 4th gen vocals.

That's the end of my post, if anyone made it to the end, thanks for reading and feel free to share your thoughts/fave vocal performances!