ITU input reference level

There are a couple of songs in my library that the first half are pretty quiet, then they "kick in" toward the end. Thus, an MP3 Gain scan on these leaves the beginning pretty quiet, which is fine. However, I notice that with BBP, these songs sound "off" especially when coming out of a fully-normalized liner or sweeper.

Would turning the ITU input reference level DOWN accomplish anything in this instance? The few posts on the forum regarding this control state that several processing parameters are also adjusted, and I’m wondering if some sort of AGC gate or freeze threshold would be an example of the parameters that get adjusted.