NCT DOJAEJUNG's "Perfume" Lingers

A review of NCT's first fixed subunit, a subtle release which sounds like a past version of K-Pop that never existed

In Patrick Süskind’s 1985 novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, protagonist Jean-Baptiste Grenouille has a preternatural sense of smell — everything has a smell to him and he can pick up people from miles away. He considers other people foolish for relying too much on sight and considers real beauty is in the fragrance. The narrator, an omnipresent third person, supports this view: odors have a persuasion “stronger than that of words, appearances, or will”, a power that “cannot be fended off” and has no remedy. It is its subtility that lends the perfume its power: a moment that turns your head, makes you suddenly imagine something romantic, or at least the beginning of a romance. It’s this moment that has one say oh, italicized, as though we were in fanfiction, a moment where suddenly auras seem real and this is one olfactorily manifestation of it.

This immersion and journey into a frail, fleeting world — far from the world of the novel Perfume, yet so close to its parameters — is one that NCT DoJaeJung operates in, too. Consisting of and named after NCT 127 vocalists Doyoung, Jaehyun, and Jungwoo, NCT’s newest subunit released their first EP Perfume last Monday. ”The first fixed one,” it read in initial news statements; what a relief to know the name won’t change, but more than that, its small member size and their combined visuals — impeccably handsome, lean, tall, and dressed, the perfect spectrum of sharp features (Doyoung), a comfortable middle (Jaehyun), and softer ones (Jungwoo) — already sell an idea of exclusiveness not unlike a perfume bottle itself. Though the album announcement, titled “Ready for launch”, initially had the three members go for the moon, the remainder of the rollout leading up to the release was concerned with fragrance: Doyoung, Jaehyun, and Jungwoo each take turns concocting their own perfumes and blender notes. But, this being K-Pop — DoJaeJung being three very attractive young men in their mid-to-late twenties — the fleeting rapture that a good fragrance brings also comes as part of the package: that is to say, flawlessly filmed videos that posit the three members as both sexy men and exclusive luxury goods. In corresponding videos to the blending paper, Doyoung is shrouded in a suggestive fog and around water as something cool but not icy, wearing a black turtleneck and see-through mesh shirts; Jaehyun is in a forest with shorts, an elf to be discovered in his adventurous fragrant world; Jungwoo plays with golden slime in his hands, wearing a black turtleneck with rose petals around him as part of a fragrance he named Mood Street. Elsewhere in the rollout, there’s short films of romantic fantasy situations: texting through multiple message limits in the 2000s with high school student Jungwoo; fighting with luxurious chef Jaehyun who would still leave his life behind to follow his girlfriend; having a good time with Doyoung at the beach who makes and titles a perfume for the lover, ugly crying at losing her later. The parameters are clear and they’re audible: smooth, sexy music aimed at grown women into (and fantasizing about) grown men and riches. To a seasoned K-Pop fan, this might not seem like anything new; it isn’t since at least 2PM’s 2013 offering ADTOY (and corresponding album Grown). And in recent K-Pop history, Red Velvet’s Irene & Seulgi tapped into similar. They prove an interesting comparison point — their first EP, 2020’s Monster, ventured into similar sonic and even visual palettes as DoJaeJung, all luxury and grace, complete with a tip of the hat to their lesbian fanbase. But there was the ill-advised lead single Monster, a track that didn’t utilize either one of Seulgi and Irene’s vocals as it made the befuddling decision to go trap and dubstep. At no point of DoJaeJung’s rollout did I get the feeling that I would be similarly blindsided. The rollout’s high quality and clear communication is satisfying in a way few things have been in K-Pop in the past couple years, which has increasingly become more obsessed with shocking first and foremost.

If Perfume comes as a tonal surprise in 2023’s K-Pop, it’s because it has no surprise at hand. There’s no rap here, no unnecessary musical break. Lyrically, too, DoJaeJung are concerned with love of all kinds: infatuation (Perfume), sex (Kiss), romance (Dive, Strawberry Sunday), the fear to confess (Ordinary — its Korean title translates to “bye” here), and heartbreak (Can We Go Back, its Korean title translating to “Aftermath”). It perfectly ties together the music films with the perfume worlds, capturing fleeting moments in which the protagonist breathes and lives and is perpetually afraid of moving, for it would mean the moment is over. One of the credited songwriters of Perfume is a longtime NCT and Jungwoo fan and managed to nab her very first writing credit on the lead, and that made inherent sense to me — if anyone knows what fleeting and intense happiness feels like, the thrill of falling to fantasy, it’s a longtime fan. She probably fainted at the music video, the concept of which is simply sexy men in sexy situations. No, not just that — this isn’t ADTOY. Perfume has handsome men enacting various fantasies for the discerning female viewer — on the bed, driving on a car at night, in a pool. It’s shockingly simple compared to CGI angel wings and rebellion, though no less high-budget. Musically, it’s a charismatic, groovy track with a bouncy, spirited bass. The chorus actually soars and doesn’t collapse the whole structure in on itself. The vocalizations are clean and centered throughout. The bridge here is especially inspired, speeding things up with the vocal melody but keeping everything else intact. The rest of the EP keeps the spirit, starting out with a high pace and ending with the slower tracks. Most of it sounds like a throwback — not unfamiliar territory if NCT 127’s back catalogue from Neo Zone on is anything to go by; certainly nothing new in SM’s extensive R&B history — but the production keeps it fresh here: that drum loop that bubbles in sultry Dive, the textured cymbals on soaring highlight Kiss, the delicious surf guitars on the upbeat Strawberry Sunday, the way the plucked strings of acoustic guitars sound on the pre-performed Can We Go Back. Doyoung, clean and in full control of his tenor, adopts a confident tone throughout, a stylistic departure from his usual yearning and powerful vocals, and delivers some stunning falsettos throughout both the title and throughout the release (him in Kiss! His light touch on Dive!). Elsewhere, it’s a treat to hear Jaehyun on more spirited material than the dazed Forever Only last year, though the R&B trappings of each track still remain firmly in his husky, textured wheelhouse — his introduction on Kiss glides with effortless ease, while closer and serviceable ballad Ordinary makes Jaehyun stretch his legs on more familiar affair. Jungwoo, usually most confident in NCT 127’s boisterous moments with his lemony touch, makes for a good balance and has a sultry, dark turn on Can We Go Back, but his vocals still work as cherry on top on Strawberry Sunday’s adlibs. The harmonization between the three vocalists is impeccable throughout, too. Overall, these are mellow, sexy tunes from vocalists we’re used to hearing in K-Pop’s foremost disruptors. But it still registers as a surprise. K-Pop in 2023 has become NCT 127’s world — a world of aggressive vocals, aggressive instrumentation, and sudden switchups. Perfume’s straightforward attitude, instead, manages to wow many times over in its lean 20-minute runtime. One thought came to me unbidden when I heard the lead for the first time: K-Pop could be this good if companies just tried.

There’s been a revival of Y2K aesthetics around the world, hyper-amplified in K-Pop. Tracks like CUPID and Attention favor easy vocals with no big changes and retro instrumentation. Perfume slots in there as an ostensible boyband variant of this return to simpler times, but the EP is uninterested in simply remaining easy listening: a track like Kiss wouldn’t start with warbled synths otherwise. That being said, though, Perfume does make one nostalgic for a form of K-pop that has never existed at any point in the genre’s thirty-plus year history. It sounds vaguely reminiscent of SHINee’s early forays into R&B, and also vaguely like it could come from the mid-2010s, if SM at the time weren’t trying to shock the world with the most overwhelming pop music ever. No, Perfume is all 2020s: a silky, modern touch of old ideas and even older instincts of attracting and entrancing. It’s impeccable at all of it. Of course, one could say that the rollout alone ensures that the listener and fan will be blinded to the musical quality and destine the group to become too big to fail. Maybe that’s the case in a world where the songs didn’t sound fantastic top to bottom. Perfume is an uniformly solid listen that has no room or interest for errors, inviting the listener to a world where romance is king and the fantasy is just as important as the result, the desired end goal. It is a release with a subtle, but exclusive finish, one that sounds wholly unconcerned with international reception and Billboard numbers — that will nevertheless bring about many musical clones in K-Pop in the coming months. That’s the power of Perfume: it lingers in the mind like the wind of a good fragrance. You wish it never ended. You follow its trace to always remain in that world, and when it’s gone, you ask yourself why all the air in the world couldn’t smell like they did. Such is a power of a good odor. Just ask Grenouille.