Potpourri: Monsta X (2020-today)
On part 3 of the boygroup's retrospective, the group finds their footing and domestic success as a six-member piece.
This is part three of the Monsta X Potpourri. Last week covered 2018-2019, you can find it here. To start from the beginning, go here.
And then came the pandemic.
One day, hundreds, if not thousands of fans chant during your performances, keep company with you during prerecording of music shows, shout I love you at all times, laugh at everything you do in signing events - and the next, it's gone. The pandemic brought a disorienting effect to idols, many of whom said it was odd to only stare at a camera, as if it was just a rehearsal. It also paused the musical trends for a bit. There was always louder - NCT 127 brought the metal riff out for their 2020 smash Kick It - but between the time period of 2020 and the end of 2022, I can only think of three trends overall: the Blinding Lights clones, the Say So-indebted disco trend, and pop rock, on one hand from Olivia Rodrigo's good 4 u, on the other hand from G-IDLE's triumphant return with Tomboy. Monsta X... kind of went there? In 2020, they were five years in the game, and sort of in the phase where no matter what they did, loyal fans would still be there. That can lead to two options: either you succumb to autopilot and tour extensively to make up for the financial loss of releasing an album... or you become confident enough to attempt risks. Girl group Twice, in their fourth year, utterly reinvented themselves musically; A Pink did the same in their sixth. For Monsta X, the six-member configuration proved new possibilities... and a new, more mature sound palette to come, especially with the titles.
But first, the English album.
ALL ABOUT LUV
All About Luv arrived Valentine's Day, 2020. As you'll recall, Who Do U Love? was the lead single of this album and came out June 14, 2019. Just like the rollout for X-PHENOMENON, the rollout of the English album went for an ungodly amount of time. But according to Eshy Gazit – Monsta X’s American manager – in the 2021 documentary The Dreaming, the singles received airplay, so this was all great. Fact is that trying to release a Japanese album, an English album, and releasing for your home market all at once meant that at some point, something had to cede. And it wasn’t going to be the Korean releases, now were they?
The single rollout feels a little befuddling to me, too. LOVE U came second and is amusing because the chorus lyrics actually go, “I really want to love you / I can’t say the word I want to / Cause they won’t play it on the radio” – which brings to mind Enrique Iglesias’s misguided turn of Tonight (I’m Lovin’ You) in 2010, a song best enjoyed in its radio edit rather than its original “Excuse me, I don’t mean to be rude / But tonight I’m fucking you.” The third single, Someone’s Someone, was a grower for me, an autotuned-led chorus and mostly that murky synth that recalls late-2010s American pop that I was never hot about. MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, the fourth single, arrived sometime December 2019 and still featured Wonho's featherlight vocals (one line). His shots - I'm sure he had some - were left out. The best song of the album, the bass guides the song forward, the percussion are lively, and the vocal performance is suitably elated at the idea of a romantic getaway. But none of the songs are very Monsta X, and besides MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, they're also not very good.
In general, ALL ABOUT LUV is funny because mostly the songs are either about sex or a breakup. The sex slate, we’ve covered. The breakup slate contains synth-adult contemporary song HAPPY WITHOUT ME, one of two songs that sounds like anything from Monsta X’s Korean discography, the other being SHE’S THE ONE with its cascading synths. From the slower side of ALL ABOUT LUV, the best track is MISBEHAVE, an adult contemporary song that kind of veers into Christmas carol in the melody about… two people with issues. “They say we got issues, but girl, that’s why I’m with you.” And “Everytime we argue, straight into the bedroom.” Wow, even when this is about fighting, it’s about sex! Minhyuk and Shownu sound great on it though. Rounding out the ALL ABOUT LUV album is BESIDE U featuring Pitbull, who sounds on autopilot just like all of Monsta X. The rollout finished in April with one of the best tracks of the record, YOU CAN’T HOLD MY HEART, a semi-rock-ish pop song that I Imagine Dragons would’ve topped the charts with in 2015. Things really are all about timing. With how Tiktok’s algorithm picks midtempo songs like these with a guitar underneath and makes them go viral, don’t be surprised if this gets a second wind.
That being said, there is a song on this album that would’ve enjoyed reasonable chart success had they invited a Latino rapper onto the remix: GOT MY NUMBER, a solid reggaeton-tinged pop with a very sticky hook about how Monsta X is better than the other guy (so the bright version of Who Do U Love?).
The album ranked #5 on the Billboard 200 (the album chart), which is a solid result, but I can’t imagine anyone pick it up for musical merit alone. The album feels stale musically, which also results in a befuddling singles rollout. You could make the argument that K-Pop, in general, is dated in musical ideas, but the best of the genre bursts in color, and the high-energy aspect of it is what draws people to fandoms in the first place. And, this is also important, classic songwriting is employed: you can always tell a verse from a chorus, a pre-chorus from a bridge, etc. (It’s also why EDM sounded fantastic in K-Pop.) In 2020, such distinctions seemed increasingly useless - choruses were indistinguishable from verses, tracks ended without a bridge, all of it lost to a general “#mood”. Monsta X can’t help but be K-Pop, which is fine. But K-Pop will always feel quaint next to the quickly eroding definition of pop in the US. In either case, while this was (still) rolling out, Monsta X geared up with their first collection of songs as a six-member piece.
FANTASIA X
You’ll be shocked to know that Fantasia X is a compound of Fantasia and Monsta X. As Minhyuk puts it, Fantasia is the most beautiful and brilliant part of your life, and the X (not unknown existence!) refers to Monsta X capturing this beautiful and brilliant part of themselves. The press release in Korean talks about a blockbuster scale of Monsta X’s world, which means that the rollout and the MV both feature clock motifs. To that end, the rollout of this EP gave six trailers, all (ostensibly) titled after tracks of the album: “ZONE,” “GASOLINE”, “CHAOTIC”, “IT AIN’T OVER”, “BEAUTIFUL NIGHT”, and “FLOW”. All six videos are shot in a stylish black and white. While they present similar motifs – phones, telephone booths, keys, disappearances, frozen time – only the last one offers a hint of a narrative, because Kihyun’s key (in the fifth, Beautiful Night) is one that winds up a music box that plays the melody in reverse… until someone comes in. It’s Minhyuk, we find out in the last clip, and with the correct clock, all of time is reversed. Imagine living in this story world, though. You escaped the worst day of your life and have to do it all again because somebody indulges in experiments. Not just once, multiple times. And why is Minhyuk doing it anyway? Does he have dead parents too?
FANTASIA sounds like Follow from the get go, but swaps the zurna for metallic, thin synths. The mostly gold color palette of the music video already suggests that this is less the extreme color and sound palette as Follow’s burst of orange and blue, and you can clearly hear Wonho in both Hyungwon and Minhyuk’s lines in the chorus. Also, this is the first, and not the last, time that Jooheon says “slay” somewhere in the rap (lmao). It’s hard to say something that’s distinctive about Fantasia musically or in terms of their discography, but it’s just as hard not to think of this record as a necessary release to quickly establish the group as six. Shownu is very sexy in the music video though. Also, this would be the last time Monsta X went for lore.
The EP Fantasia X, similarly, doesn’t want to attempt the heights reached in Follow – Find You, and is largely fine. ZONE takes liberal inspiration from 2018’s Fallin’ with its EDM beatdrop, while highlight Beautiful Night employs tropical pulses and synth arpeggios to great effect. The other ones also take inspiration from other songs – FLOW is like a take on Chainsmokers’ Something Just Like This, while Chaotic sounds like a Monsta X B-side of the Destroyer kind (minus rock, though). IT AIN’T OVER rhymes “it ain’t over / til it’s over” to nauseating effect, a rhyme that is miraculously worse than any fire / higher rhymes. Stand Up, the closer, has all of Monsta X chant together in the beginning in a way that reminds me a lot of Big Bang’s Sunset Glow, but its centerpiece is more modern: a mostly tropical pop chorus that sounds like it should’ve been on a FIFA 2020 compilation. GASOLINE, the dark, reggaeton-esque beat that played in Shownu’s clip, is not on the album. Ahead of the release of Fantasia X, Monsta X said that Fantasia was a title track candidate and eventually won over another song. Based on what Kihyun says regarding Fantasia, I believe that song would eventually become the next lead single, and the fantastic GASOLINE became a B-side to the release that followed.
Fatal Love
Competition programs aren’t new in the K-Pop world – Monsta X came out of one. But what television label Mnet did with Produce 101 was still different: the idea was that the viewer, “the national producer”, would “decide” the eleven members, trainees of various entertainment labels, and make them debut – and the group would exist for a temporary time. This started in 2015, and continued to disrupt the status quo all the way until 2020, when investigations concluded that Mnet rigged the results in their favor. As such, the 2019 formed X1 disbanded as soon as they debuted, and the first year of the pandemic was also the first where Mnet did not debut a new group. Instead, the channel revived a format that had previously made (and broke) established girlgroups with Queendom and made one for boygroups. In fact, they made a two-part bit out of it: Road to Kingdom, aired 2020, re-introduced The Boyz, who debuted 2017, to a broader public. Following that win, they released the sleek CHASE EP, where the rollout began with parts of members’ faces – lips, eyes, jawline – as “The Stealers” of the town that needed to be found. Elsewhere, NCT 127 delivered back-to-back knockouts with Neo Zone and its repackage The Final Round. Fantasia’s MV, the golden set at least, already reminds me of Kick It’s MV, but I see both the plastic foliage of Neo Zone’s album cover and CHASE’s member closeups in third album’s Fatal Love’s initial announcement – but far from me calling it a poor copy, it in fact makes Love Killa quite modern. Monsta X was always part of the conversation – Ateez sounds like them, for instance – but for the first time, Monsta X chose to engage with the conversation around them, too. And they were ready to… slay, chill, and kill. According to Love Killa’s main hook, anyway.
Love Killa finally marries the big budget Monsta X have for their music videos with the song quality. 2017’s Dramarama sounds like the closest musical touchpoint of Love Killa, what with the bass being the main conceit. But where Dramarama sounded a bit playful in the verses at times, Love Killa is pure sleek, except the chorus section that feels much more… Monsta X (Kihyun singing – right, but it’s a catchy bit!). There’s a bit of a warbly, high-pitched synth in the pre-chorus and chorus section that adds the song its necessary spice before the impeccable cool returns. “You to look into my eyes, straight into my eyes, and just say: I want you, eat me like a main dish” goes I.M in the second verse, and it’s easily the most sexually explicit I’ve heard a Korean pop song go in its English part. (Yay to oral sex?) What I find so interesting about this song in particular is the commentary Minhyuk gave it when Monsta X reacted to their own MV: “The song is good because it’s at a comfortable key.” Kihyun objects, saying it's much too low. It’s a very illuminating thing to say and it’s the very thing that makes Love Killa stand apart from all the other Monsta X titles thus far. It’s just the reinvention they needed from Follow in particular, where Kihyun went very high in the pre-chorus.
The music video uses a classic K-Pop trope – the members cosplay as various protagonists of various well-known classics. Don’t ask anyone what Shownu’s was – I have heard both John Wick and Hitman, but fact is he simply wears a suit and looks stunning. Jooheon as Heath Ledger’s Joker and I.M as Taxi Driver visually represent the way we heard them again and again: a bit crazy and very fiery for Jooheon, and total cool for I.M. Kihyun is locked up yet again (this time as Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of Lambs fame). Hyungwon and Minhyuk have the best sets: Hyungwon makes a very stylish Tyler Durden, and Minhyuk makes a perfect fit for Patrick Bateman. Drop the morning routine, king!
The rest of Fatal Love makes for a tight, largely satisfying affair – for the first time, the loud songs have a strongly threatening aura to them (the very good Guess Who and Thriller make two great examples of this). Gasoline places right after Love Killa and is every bit as good as the teaser suggested. Hyungwon makes his debut as writer, composer, and arranger of the moody and nocturnal Nobody Else, while Korean-American soloist Eric Nam lends his writing skills (and some background vocals) on the aggressive BEASTMODE. Stand Together uses traditional instrumentation for yet another song that sounds like a threat, and then the aggression abruptly ends for the closing section. Sorry I’m Not Sorry, the closer, is acoustic-led and sounds quite American in production and structure. Last Carnival twinkles in the back, a more mature take on some of the “cute” B-sides Monsta X has had in their career. My personal favorite of the album, though, is Night View. Following a perfectly fitting, airy vocal performance from all members (I.M shines here quite a bit!) the synths surge forward in the mostly instrumental chorus, where only one question is asked: “Shall we dance on the moonlight?” For three minutes, Monsta X make that sound less like a grammatical mistake, and more like a thing that could actually happen. Don’t expect a synthpop masterpiece of the levels of Just Hold On, We’re Going Home, because this still takes notes from conventional K-Pop songwriting tropes. That being said, this song couldn’t have placed in earlier points of Monsta X’s discography. They sound older and more nuanced, willing to succumb to the mood rather than coast by on the production. Fatal Love rank among the best of Monsta X’s discography. Maybe the PR team should’ve saved the “blockbuster scale” bit for this record?
Flavors of Love
Unlike the Korean discography, the Japanese discography doesn't boast a total 180 - if a degree was picked, it’s like 360. Third Japanese full-length Flavors of Love is the strongest Japanese album just by the strength of a solid album tracklisting - noisy songs in the front, quiet stuff in the back - but is obviously not at the quality of Fatal Love. WANTED, the single with which the album was announced, completes the trilogy of Monsta X delving into Turkish sounds for title tracks, this time going for 2000s Turkish Pop. But it wasn't the lead single to the album, that was instant snoozer for-the-fans midtempo track Wish on the Same Sky. The Korean tracks that made it in Japanese are Follow, Fantasia, and Love Killa. The rest of the album is solid, if nothing to write home about. I like RE:VERSEDAY and DIAMOND HEART, the former of the Stuck category for the umpteenth time, and the latter a propulsive track that halts all beat for a dramatic string section and Kihyun crooning Shine on your diamond heart.
One of a Kind
One of a Kind marks the first of a trilogy – no, not like that – in which Jooheon would produce the title tracks. If Love Killa didn't convince you of Monsta X's reinvention, lead single Gambler most definitely will. The song starts with snaps and Jooheon saying with a deadpan voice, If you don't know, now you know. Okay? Deal. Then an ominous bass comes in, followed with some of the best Minhyuk and Hyungwon vocals on a title track at this point, all syrupy and slow. The guitars kick in for the pre-chorus before adding another pre-chorus part with Shownu that briefly pulls back only to amp the tension with a very cleverly used Kihyun verse before the chorus takes off — mostly instrumental, dark horns first before the one-liner My suit is black, my suit is fresh, open my pack let me show how I bang breaks the tension. It’s so cool. Jooheon's opening bar to his rap — me? I'm a handsome sum of money — is probably one of the best K-pop rap one liners of all time. And when the song just keeps exploding near the end like a row of fireworks with the Jooheon-Kihyun double whammy, one gets the sense that Gambler is Monsta X reimagined: the good parts are left intact, and everything else has cooled to sub-zero degrees. That pays off for Hyungwon and Minhyuk the most, but it helps not to have any shouting in the chorus on a Monsta X for a change. This is the first Monsta X song to actually have groove, and is one of my favorite title tracks of theirs overall.
The music video follows Monsta X doing a heist, which means hot people in smart suits. Monsta X stage the whole affair, including a made-up fight between Kihyun and Minhyuk in the climax, and when the bomb planted by Kihyun earlier goes off, all of Monsta X take police cars and leave the scene, with the white people present (presumably?) dead. I'm reminded of The Boyz's The Stealer, specifically their 2021 Golden Disc Awards performance - needless to say, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven was a cultural reset.
Much like their English-language discography, the rest of the album, called One Of A Kind, is mostly concerned with sex. In a true K-Pop EP move, the blockbuster Gambler is followed up with a much calmer track: highlight and bossa nova-influenced Heaven. It’s followed with Addicted, which sounds like a late-20s revisit of earlier Monsta X "loud" B-sides. Secrets is a straightforward K-Pop bside, benign pop and in all-English, featuring the line "They're playing Whitney from the 90s, yeah" (I'm guessing My Love Is Your Love? or maybe I'm Your Baby Tonight?) and would later appear on the second English full-length album The Dreaming. BEBE does similar things in Korean. The most interesting track on here is Rotate, with its bouncy bass as a main conceit and bursts in color as soon as Kihyun croons "Yeaaaaaaaaaa" featuring members helpfully adding "you like to make dirty," And when Kihyun goes "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," the answer is "all day, all night". Then I.M raps the line "Switchin' positions, I like to rotate" I think I.M wants to let his fans know he enjoys having sex! Shownu and Minhyuk deliver two very strong performances too, but this is Kihyun's all the way. The release is closed with a Korean version of LIVIN' IT UP. I don't think One of a Kind ranks among my favorite Monsta X releases, and as a follow-up to Fatal Love feels a bit too safe musically and artistically, but it's hard to deny that it's solid across the board.
No Limit
The car pulls up - yes, that's one of the cars that left at the end of the Gambler music video - to a desert. (Shownu is missing because he had to serve in the military.) I.M lazes around with a cowboy hat on him, and on cue, a Western-esque whistle appears out of nowhere. What follows is what I can only describe as the Jooheon-and-Kihyun show, a lot of shouting from those two, featuring three others. As a result, this is a Monsta X title I aggressively do not care about. DOA like Rush? Probably not, though Rush and Trespass are definitive inspiration points to this song. A re-tread from everything Gambler set itself out to do? Absolutely. Welcome to No Limit, this is lead single Rush Hour, a song that traps Monsta X in a hell of their own making - and part two of the "Jooheon produced the title" trilogy. On that note, I hate that "dash, wiro dash" part so much. So much.
No Limit arrived late 2021, and, like many Monsta X releases where I don't enjoy the title, the B-sides provide much better. Autobahn is sleek and utter electronics, coupling empty drums and with a muscular bass and highly processed vocal turns, if not outright zero-setting autotune. It's the most muted of Monsta X's rave attempts, but possibly also the most accessible for fans. Ride With U continues the theme of driving tunes, but is more pop; Got me in chains adds a dash of classic Monsta X songwriting on top of it. Just Love is much slower in its gear, with I.M coasting on it effortlessly; Mercy is all dubstep drama that sounds a little dated. And I got love is the for-the-fans slow track. In terms of career highlights, it probably won't rank as high as a The Connect: Dejavu (few releases do), but No Limit does at least try to reach where Fatal Love went and makes for a competent, well-produced release.
The Dreaming
I did not like the documentary The Dreaming. Released in the midst of the pandemic, it is letter to fans, online concert, and behind-the-scenes content fans normally get for free all at once, and all of it is awkward. (And no Shownu!?) The corresponding album, much like ALL ABOUT LUV, is a collection of solid, catchy pop songs that doesn't sound of its time at all. The ones that are, like the synth-drenched Whispers in the Dark, still sound like they're six years too late. Like with ALL ABOUT LUV, the songs are still very almost-there in the sexual innuendos. Here's one from the poppy You Problem (which sounds like the bicycle ride track from Wii Sports Resort): "All these chills, all these thrills, burn my billion dollar bills / Got us lying naked on the floor, Like you've never seen before" - okay! Sure!
It's interesting where K-Pop ended up with its foray into the United States. BTS managed to cross over by singing straight from the demo lyrics, but even then, it was moreso the strength of the fandom and less radioplay. I don't want to say BTS arrived to #1 on the Hot 100 "without legitimate impact" or whatever - that would be xenophobic on the one hand, and misunderstanding the situation on the other. K-Pop made collecting and buying its main draw. That is what you're told to do as a fan - buy, buy, buy. Like the idol? Buy the album. Like this selfie of your favorite idol? Buy the album. They're working so hard for you - what can you do? Buy their records. I can't even fault BTS fans for playing the game; they do not know any other. It does, however, put BTS - and, actually, all the other groups - in an odd position where it gets abundantly clear there is a not-inconsiderable niche (in the US, but worldwide too) that has enough power to let these albums chart to No. 1 but never in the Billboard Hot 100. So you have a fandom in the US, but the general public won't care for you. Some groups plain quit trying to change up their sound for an elusive spot they might not even get: NCT 127 - you recall they tipped their hat to I Like It territories with Regular - stopped doing English versions, or really any kind of mainstream attempt anywhere, and charts nicely both domestically and on the Billboard 200 regardless. (SM probably stopped that because there were threats rumors of a NCT Hollywood unit by SM, which were squelched only just recently.) On the other hand, girlgroup Twice earnestly tries challenging the Hot 100 and, at least, have songs that remotely work in the current American pop conversation (the latest two releases, Moonlight Sunrise and Set Me Free, borrow from Dua Lipa's 2020 album Future Nostalgia). In both markets, but especially the international one, Monsta X could do what NCT 127 did. But are they interested in screaming Jealousyyyyyyyy again? Doesn't seem like it. On the other hand, are they interested in topping the Billboard charts? But that would imply extensive touring. That would imply a lengthy promotional time and a lot of acrobatics on Monsta X songs. I'm talking songs under three minutes, I'm talking murky not-quite trap with not-quite singing #mood pieces, or the alternative, which is a viral TikTok dance with some funny hashtag. No Korean entertainment label is ready to go there - and frankly, why bother? You got your fans, and your fans buy it as long as their bias looks cute and the songs are semi-decent in a K-Pop context. So The Dreaming ends up in this awkward position where it's neither true fan fodder nor a genuine bid for the market. At least they sound good.
Shape of Love
In May 2022, Monsta X released another EP called Shape of Love. On the lead single Love, Hyungwon opens the song with What do you think love is? For the final piece of the "Jooheon produced that" trilogy, the answer to love is a blend of Jersey club bed squeaks, pianos, an old school hip hop beat, and a delicious saxophone solo after the chorus that Jooheon dominates. It still does relatively reliable Monsta X things, mind you, but it’s spirited and a lot of fun. The song didn't grab me at first listen at all, and only revealed itself to me on the third listen or so. It's slightly pastiche and slightly modern, and as such slots in almost perfectly with 2022's music landscape. The music video is Monsta X performing, mostly, with members getting shots in various other sets that the other uses. Minhyuk looks great in the one with the white walls. The glittery shots are almost certainly inspired by NCT 127's Favorite MV. Other than that, no lore... no extra sets for the members... just vibes. Monsta X don't know what love is, and the music video is a collection of dream imagery that doesn't offer answers, either. But Kihyun shouts, "I hope this moment is forever - please make me crazy," at the end of the chorus, which is as close as an answer as anyone in this lifetime will get.
The Melon Charts are sort of the Korean Billboard Hot 100, with the added delicacy of updating every hour - very important if you're into idol groups and want to chart your favorite's success. There's also a couple other charts, most of which pull data from their streaming platform (Melon Charts with streaming platform Melon, Flo Charts with streaming platform Flo, etc.) So a Perfect All Kill, a name that music platform aggregate iChart came up with in 2009, is when a song hits #1 on all important music platforms. Monsta X didn't quite go there... but because following a steady upclimb of the domestic fandom, they nevertheless ranked #1 on five different music charts with Love. It took Monsta X seven years to get to this point... forget long time or no, this is nothing to scoff at for a boygroup. Or any group. To my knowledge, the comeback to follow after this one - Beautiful Liar, released January 2023 - did not peak at #1.
The rest of the record, Shape of Love, is thankfully not as blank as this ridiculous album cover. But just like One of a Kind, (and No Limit to some degree), it’s content with giving you middle of the road pop music. Burning Up features R3HAB and is a straightforward, sleek pop track that would slot in nicely with their American discography. Breathe utilizes a drop but instead of it being bass, this time it's bright disco synths, complete with a key change. (Also, they say take deep breath in English, and say similar in Korean... which... isn't breathe but A for effort!) Wildfire is in English, employing all drama in the verses and snapping into attention in the chorus. Minhyuk sounds incredible on it because he is clearly not as wide-reaching with his vocals as Kihyun is; his fragility adds a real depth to the song. Saranghanda, which is I Love You in Korean, is a mature re-take on the tropical pop trend, and we close the album out with AND, a midtempo track with reverbed acoustic guitars that I'm never hot about.
Much like American artists, Korean idols also sign a contract when debuting. But instead of album obligations, idols sign a seven-year contract. (That used to be thirteen years in very, very dark times over at SM Entertainment.) So a lot of K-Pop groups live in their known formation only for seven years because idols decide they want to do their own thing, try out acting, or maybe the label drops them because the group isn't a financial asset they're interested in carrying around. Five of six members of Monsta X chose to renew - with the sixth, I.M, to part ways with Starship Entertainment but still be around as a Monsta X member. Honestly one of the best-case scenarios of the group.
REASON
It's so strange to talk about a release I just covered. But here we are, January 2023. REASON arrived with all five members present. I had this to say of the release back then: "Reason ends the trilogy of Jooheon-produced titles and brings Ryan Jhun to the helm title track Beautiful Liar. Thankfully, though, the song continues the rock flourishes to great success. There's no sudden switchups here; the intro that you hear at the start continues, mainly assisted by a slick bass [...] There's a real joy to [hear] the double punch of the surging pre-chorus with these sick electric guitars and the insistent, almost urgent chorus that pulls back in the production but maintains the drama with the vocals. I.M's rap part is especially inspired and rhyming "hoo!" with "hoo!" on Jooheon's part is cooler than I could convey you through text." Hyungwon and Minhyuk sound both fantastic on it; Minhyuk with his syrupy inflections, and Minhyuk’s fantastic falsetto gliding with him. I want to highlight the music video too, which continues the big arena sets that Love started, plus adds crowds and even horses that really adds to the song's vibe of a matador waiting for the bull to strike. Just when it does, the tapestry changes. Remember when I said Monsta X wouldn't go back to mature songwriting until years down the line... with All In? Yeah, this Chevkov's Gun waited seven long years. It's a fantastic song.
This EP has everyone fully present vocally, and for the first time in a while, the melodies are not only fine, but genuinely interesting. Even with a track like Deny, ostensibly R&B, the pre-chorus and chorus elevate the track and make it sound fluffy. (Plus, those stick drums in the verses!) The tracks sound like they could be singles. LONE RANGER, a track best described as yeehaw pop, makes me wish Korean artists explored year-length promotions. Reason is a true, towering achievement. We'll see if it has legs in K-Pop and if somebody will try and copy this sound - won't take too long now. Even if nobody does, though, it goes down as one of Monsta X’s best releases regardless.
The next (and truly final) time we cover Monsta X, I briefly talk about what each member did individually as musicians, and, as a finish, I have some personal thoughts to bring up. Also, you know, a tl;dr, cause we’re heading to part four. Wonho gets his own post.