NCT’s signature WTF-meets-urban styling made a comeback with NCT Dream’s recent performance of “We Go Up” on KBS Music Bank.
It’s the kind of styling that’d delightfully weird and off-kilter: just deliberate enough that you know it was on purpose–but very rough around the edges.
All the members wore some sort of sweat suit or loungewear, topped with a black blazer and a ID badge lanyard. It all seems mismatched, like something you or I would wear on our day off when we’re doing laundry, until you realize that each member has a color scheme. The continuity of the color gives a certain level of formality to the sub-casual sweatsuit style.
It’s almost like a mismatch of genres. The decor motifs of the sweats and tops are mismatched (casual), but the color scheme is monochromatic (formal). The blazers are rendered in black (formal) but cut in a loose style (casual). ID Badge lanyards scream both work (formal) and conventions/fun (casual). They also flop around a lot and make it impossible for an outfit to look completely pulled together.
Chenle wore an all-white outfit with a contrasting jacket in the “Go” video, and it looked out of place because the level of formality was higher than the rest of the styling for that video. Here, though, it works (thought it’s Renjun who’s wearing the all-white outfit) because of the contrast principle.
I love it when “official” things also have a sense of humor. Little details like this are why we all love NCT Dream a little bit more than all the other NCT units.
Update:
We got a live one. Matching white pants and jacket with a different colorful rugby shirt for each member. Similar concept as the sweatsuit/formal jacket combo, but a different execution.
I’ve noticed a recurring pattern in many of SM’s releases over the past year or two. Most notable are two SM Station x 0 singles back-to-back with the word “young” in the title.
“We Young” – Chanyeol x Sehun – Sept 2018
“Young” – Baekhyun x Loco – Aug 2018
“We Young” – NCT Dream – Aug 2017
“Young and Free” – Xiumin x Mark – July 2017
I would say MAYBE this comes from NCT Dream being the youth unit, but NCT Dream only put out one of these songs. Most of these include members of EXO.
So maybe it’s not Lee Soo-Man who’s having the crisis, but EXO. They’re getting to the point where they can no longer push out military service (I believe Xiumin is required to enlist this year) and are staring down the results of what happens when a group is scattered through military enlistment. Super Junior has been doing a decent job of picking back up the pieces as the members end their service, but it’s still a somewhat scattershot approach.
Perhaps I’m trying to ascribe to much meaning behind why there are 4 songs with incredibly similar themes and titles. (I probably am.) But I’m curious as to why there are songs from two different groups that have the exact same title. Is this an SEO thing? Is the Chanyeol x Sehun version going to be a remix of the NCT Dream song? (We’ll find out.) (I’m hoping it’s a Chanyeol original, tbh.)
When you add NCT Dreams “Go” and “We Go Up” to the mix, it further muddies the SEO waters–let alone someone’s ability to remember the actual titles of the songs.
Part of me wonders if this is a byproduct of an overly refined system, in which the syntax “We ____” has tested well and in which concepts of youth and going places have also risen to the top. Watching how SM iterates on a theme, it almost looks to me like they’re putting out multiple variations, waiting for one to stick.
I don’t know anything, really, about the behind-the-scenes of the pop music industry so take that with a grain of salt.
I see patterns and can’t help but speculate on them.
SM Entertainment’s love affair with minimalism continues.
Maybe it’s white space.
Whatever you want to call it, “We Go Up” is the latest in line of lighter songs that breathe between notes rather than being a 100% wall of noise all of the time.
Twice’s “Likey” also did this. I don’t follow all of k-pop enough to know if this is a legit trend, but I can trace it from Red Velvet’s “Peek-a-Boo” through to NCT 127’s “Boss” and now NCT Dream with “We Go Up.”
There are so many tropes that permeate this video. The IRL bubble sounds and other samples, which tie it directly to songs like “Boss” and even the clinking glass in EXO’s “Sweet Lies” and “Twenty Four” (I’m pretty sure it’s the same sample in both songs). There’s the pantheon of NCT dance moves, including the bicep flex, the elbow airplane, the knock-knees, the back-to-the-camera-ending-pose (previously seen in NCT 127 “Limitless” and EXO-CBX “Hey Mama”), and of course the obligatory NCT high five.
Mark is aging out of NCT Dream after this comeback. Because of this, the Dreamies have been working to bolster their rap line. I’m pretty impressed with Jaemin and Jisung’s raps. Somebody’s got to hold down the fort when Mark is gone, but nobody could replace him. Mark’s raps have gotten better with age (and he’s barely an adult). Compare his rap in “We Go Up” or “Go” to something like “Mad City” (which was still good) and you’ll hear how much he’s grown.
I really hope that Renjun drew the wolf that’s on their flag. He’s the artist of the group, in that the members have forced him to show off his drawing skills on variety shows.
Like “Boss,” Dreams’ “We Go Up” is a lot more interesting with headphones. There’s a lot of subtle layering that gets revealed when you pay more attention. The bass line is addicting–just enough space between the notes to keep you hanging on–and I love the use of the minor key.
Sometimes I think about how much SM does A/B testing and releases new-and-improved versions of their own content. Red Velvet’s “Mr. E” is a more refined version of “Zoo.” EXO tested the reggae concept with “Twenty Four” before they came out with a reggae-influenced title track. In that vein, this song feels like a refined melody of “We Young” from last summer combined with a bigger version of the beat from “Boss.” Not everything is an evolution, but it’s interesting to tease out the similarities and watch ideas develop.
Kind of like when every group in SM worse gold and silver lame sometime circa 2012.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with NCT Dream. “We Go Up” is not the sound I was expecting from them, but I’m loving it. It’s relaxed and loose and yet interesting and fun. I’m looking forward to their album release–this should be good.
PS. SM Entertainment, this is another official request for a Mark/Haechan subunit.
I have so many thoughts about NCT 2018 Empathy. So many. Most of them are not positive, but I remain hopeful.
If you’re just joining this comeback cycle, I was not a huge fan of NCT U’s “Boss” but liked NCT Dream’s “Go” despite my dreamies being all grown up. The more I listen to “Go,” the more of a Haechan appreciator I’m become. His voice is gorgeous and he uses it impeccably. (“Boss” is growing on me, ngl. Listening to it on headphones is like suddenly going underwater and seeing all the coral reefs and fishes when previously you were just been dog paddling above the surface.)
However, that brings us to NCT 127 and “Touch.” Writing about it means that I should post the music video on my channel and for that I hate myself a little bit.
This video makes me cringe.
It’s clear that Dream and 127 swapped concepts for this comeback, with Dream taking the hard-edged grotty urban-inflected hip-hop sound, and 127 covering the squeaky-clean brightly lit bubblegum pop arena. However, unlike Dream’s previous singles (even “Chewing Gum”), “Touch” doesn’t have a twist, or a nudge-and-wink, or a naughty streak. It’s just plain, simple bright smiles and boyfriend material.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that–there certainly isn’t. But it isn’t why I started listening to NCT and certainly isn’t what attracts me to k-pop.
I recognize that I’m not the typical fan (I’m older than most of their target market), because I see the younger fans clearly enjoying the visuals of all the members in this comeback. And yes, they are all very good looking. But I miss the gonzo NCT styling which even applied to Dream when they were promoting. There are no fur hats or eyeball rings and shark jackets or fantasy military jackets. Or Gucci on a hoverboard.
It’s not just the visuals that bother me, though. The actual song “Touch” is really corporate sounding, like you’d stick it into a commercial for an off-brand soda. Frankly, it sounds like a reject from EXO’s winter album that some underling producer got stuck with trying to “funk it up” for NCT.
Which brings us to the Empathy album as a whole, which someone remarked should be called NCT 2016-2018 since it contains all the assorted non-album releases since NCT debuted. “Black on Black,” all of the NCT U songs. NCT U’s “The Seventh Sense” was the first song that drew me to NCT, and if I had discovered it on an album like Empathy, I don’t know if I would have explored more. (Of course it was Dream’s “My First and My Last” that really got me. NCT Dream is secretly everybody’s favorite.)
Specifically, I dislike albums that are all single and no b-side. Even with the intro and outro, there’s no reason for me to listen to Empathy on its own. NCT has always been weak in their discography–partly because they’re still experimenting with their sound but also because they only have mini albums and don’t have a body of work built up like a band like EXO or Big Bang did. Granted, the inherent structure of NCT’s design would make it more difficult to build up a body of coherent work, because they’re built up of subunits with different themes and sounds.
Even more specifically, I’m really disappointed by the song “Yest0day.” Interesting title, not a bad hook, fantastic rap from Mark (who is really starting to hone his chops), all ruined by an idiotic rap from Lucas. One of the main reasons I like k-pop is that even when the rap is simplistic or lacking finesse it’s not dumb. I hate dumb rap where they take a word and then rhyme it five times in a row without any rhythmic variation or wordplay or anything. Mark delivers the opposite of that. So does Taeyong. But Lucas the Usurper? No more dumb rap, please.
Now. Granted. Part of this sounds like the knee-jerk reaction of someone who is protective of a fledgling k-pop group. And that is true, I like NCT and being a person high in openness, I like the idea of an ever-expanding group that can shift to accommodate different musical styles and moods.
But it’s hard to watch SM deliberately crash the original NCT concept. One of the benefits of doing it now is that I know that I won’t have to watch it happen in slow motion, when producers run out of ideas and the concepts all start to morph slowly into each other and enough members leave that all the subunits are consolidated to keep the group alive. At least we don’t have that future.
Maybe (hah) this means that we can get more clarity out of future NCT subunits, who will emerge to deposit a well-conceived package of music into our earballs before evaporating back into the nebulous NCT mothership. (Isn’t that what the concept was supposed to be anyway?)
I suspect that the deliberate switching of Dream and 127’s concepts, plus the cataloging of U’s random singles into one album, serves as a zeroing-out for the group. I think this is supposed to be a new start, a time for all the subunits to develop empathy for each other’s concepts and learn how to work together or whatever. However they promote from this point forward, it won’t be the NCT that we started with.
On the plus side, SM is always A/B testing, so I’m hoping we’ll get something stronger out of this. The concepts for both Super Junior and EXO crashed too, and both groups did alright for themselves.
PS: SM Entertainment, this is my request for an official Mark/Haechan subunit.
I want to escape into a misty forest at dawn and run toward the light that spills through the trees. I want to cloak myself in velvet and swim into a glittering nebula. I want to discover the truth of God and the universe.
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