Potpourri: NCT 127 (title tracks and MVs)
On part one, a deep dive into the seminal SM boygroup's title tracks, the connection to dreams, and abrasive melodies
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Introducing and spreading Hallyu throughout Asia wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to be the very architect of the K-Pop system, adapting a Motown model of fostering artists straight out of school and into the limelight with perfect faces, flawless mannerisms, and an ever-present cheerful smile. And the holograms certainly weren’t enough, the ones where Lee Soo-man — the founder of SM Entertainment — goes in and out of with an eerie synchronicity in his keynote titled New Culture Technology. The year was 2016, and K-Pop needed a change. As such, here was the “new” aspect of the culture technology that SM has fostered since its foundation: interaction, N for short. To really prove the point of this new culture technology, the new talent would have to show up to the presentation: masked boys wearing white clothes, surrounding the press. With EDM music blaring from the speakers and a projection of the whole world, some lights of which are pointed directly into some of the boys’ chests as dreams are mentioned in three different languages — Korean, Chinese, Japanese — , the artist group immediately put the Interaction into NCT. The group was to be called Neo Culture Technology. They would be everywhere: at your fingertips, certainly, but also somewhere in your area. Hallyu — Korean wave — would be fully localized. Things would start with Seoul, the birthplace of K-Pop, and spread as far as South America. All these boys appearing? It was just the beginning.
… Or so did Lee Soo-man imagine things would play out. Now in the year 2023, suffice to say that there’s only (”only”) four units of NCT — one of which the Tokyo subunit, announced all the way in 2016 and not even debuted yet — stalled at twenty-three members (plus the other couple members yet to debut). It did start in Seoul, though; indeed, the first subunit of NCT has the rounded-up longitude of Seoul in their name, 127. And, in a way that Lee Soo-man probably foresaw — just the way it happened with H.O.T, TVXQ, Super Junior, SHINee, and EXO — NCT 127 went on to change the sonic fabric of K-Pop. Theirs is a world where dreamy landscapes and lyrics about new worlds are matched with aggressive music with jarring musical ideas, where there’s as many chants as there are chords, where reacting to their music in extremes is the only appropriate reaction. Their music is the logical conclusion of holding attention by constantly demanding attention — that classic SM songwriting pushed into exciting new directions. NCT 127 is possibly responsible for everything wrong in K-Pop today; they are the culmination of everything K-Pop has to offer. Debuting in 2016 and consisting of leader and rapper Taeyong, vocalists Taeil, Johnny, Yuta, Doyoung, Jaehyun, Jungwoo, Haechan, and rapper Mark, NCT 127 are the final boss of boy groups.
The Origin, Synchronicity of your Dreams, The 7th Sense
How can you showcase technology that has yet to exist? Interstellar went deep on the scientific aspect; Blade Runner’s world of supersized advertisements and recordings of overblown pupils communicate more-so a vibe than possible technological advancements; Her is the real world in Tumblr-ready color palettes. Unveiled on the New Culture Technology showcase, the first three videos of NCT — and really, a lot of early NCT videography — has no answer for the technology. It does, however, deal with the interaction aspect of NCT and the uncanny factor of the NCT project altogether, and it does so by dealing in explicit dream logic. “The Origin,” the first of these, begins with a child actor lost in the desert, drawing a picture of a beach. A mother figure appears only to disappear. He passes out and eventually arrives to the beach he’s dreamt of. Turns out, though, that this is a dream of Winwin’s, who was part of the NCT 127 lineup from 2016 to 2020. The idea here — conjured by the Utterly Deranged, because why does a mother figure appear only to be swept in the wind? Why is that child left with nothing? — is that out of the desert landscape, a sea of new things emerges, imagined by a chosen few.
Though there is no music in The Origin, the idea of a dream connecting two real people together carries over to other NCT 127 music videos, and there is a clear connection from The Origin to Synchronicity to your Dreams, the desert child and Winwin… over to Taeyong, who wakes up gripping sand. First order of business is to follow the sand. Second order of business: get the leather jacket on and start to dance. What is heard here is “The 7th Sense”, sung by Taeyong, Jaehyun, Mark, Doyoung, and Haechan and performed by Taeyong, Hansol (an former SM trainee originally slated to debut with NCT), Ten (of the Chinese NCT unit WayV), Mark, and Jaehyun. The sand is paired with cold fluorescent lights, a hallway with a new member picking up where the last left off. Each are in their own corridor: one with a horse, one with house plants, two with brick walls. It eventually leads to a defunct swimming pool where the whole group dances. Open your eyes, Taeyong drawls with the assists of Doyoung and Haechan, quietly open your eyes. His dream of the desert led him to more dryness, an uncanny place that no human besides construction workers should access. Such is the synchronicity of dreams, of bodies in dance.
The final section, titled the same way as the song though not featuring it, has Winwin drink tea and dance with grace and fluidity in an Eastern set. When he finishes, he feels the sea breeze, and the child’s mother touching his hair, and the connection to another man in another time.
The 7th Sense (NCT U)
The five members that originally sang the very first NCT song all went on to become members of NCT 127 (and Mark and Haechan to NCT Dream as well). Though it’s attributed to NCT U, its soundscape and visuals make a canny prototype for what NCT 127 would expand upon later: trap. As trap started to dominate the US charts, it leaped over to Korea, particularly emboldened by Mnet shows like Show Me The Money. SM decided to add their particular flourishes to the globally popular genre.
What eventually was released as “The 7th Sense” in April 2016 featured one different member: Ten instead of Haechan. Without the latter’s vocals, the song — firmly entrenched in trap with a languid bass and a skittering wooden snare — feels more muted somehow, darker. There is an aggression to it here, simmering at the back, as if the cold world from which Taeyong closes his eyes is at fault for being so distant. At its peak, it still remains close to but not actually breaking through the surface, and it’s when Mark goes, and that’s a long-ass ride, with a speed and command that still feels preternatural for a Korean pop idol. In the teaser, all of the members stand inside a glass case of what looks like the inside of a hammam. Doyoung looks at the camera through a reflection, while Taeyong is surrounded by blue fluorescent lights and radiates dry ice through the air. All the blue light, combined with the members in such thin glass bring about a strong visual image: the idol on your screen, just a touch away. Other supporting elements are interspersed with quick cuts: the extremely vibrant colors, member profiles in double exposure, intricate choreography, glass breaking.
In the lyrics, Jaehyun sings of the same dream, a familiar song that connects “us”. This dream — and by extension, the song — saves the protagonist, someone trapped by past and present, uncertain of the connection between dream and reality, from his eternal slumber, and awakens his seventh sense, something so supernatural that we’re long past the sixth. In this dream, everyone is like him, and he can communicate with ease. But the bridge doesn’t sound euphoric: there’s a dazed feeling to it, as if tripping into a new world in some kind of trance, a pied piper beckoning the protagonist to forget. Their seventh sense is a sense of direction: somewhere far away where reality can’t hurt our protagonist anymore.
“The 7th Sense” didn’t necessarily predict idol message platforms. It was part of SM’s game plan already, and they had an app called Vyrl (pronounced “Viral”) and ROOKIES (of SM’s Rookies) that had functions designed to bring idol fantasy and fan money together. But eventually, they would interact through the touch of a screen, be it through VLive (launched 2015), Instagram Lives, and subscription-based app Lysn. One of the functions of Lsyn was Bubble, on which idols could chat to fans as if they were really talking to one another. Lysn was created by SM, unsurprisingly. It eventually ceded to Hybe’s Weverse, an evolved form of the idol-fan platform.
Without You (NCT U)
Doyoung doesn’t know that this is a dream, though his big smile and wide eyes tell us that he feels like he’s in one: after all, he has his girl by his side, running with her and grabbing some snacks. Sure, occasionally he dazes off, but that’s just lack of sleep, and with her, that doesn’t happen. Taeil has been there: in fact, his dream — his time during the dream — is a jail of his own making, flashbacks within flashbacks that he can’t pull himself out of, back when he and the girl were together as children. Jaehyun would know: he dreams being Doyoung, inhabiting his body; he also enters Taeil’s body for a while. Time jumps and warps until it has no meaning whatsoever, a train track coming from and going to nowhere. The girl is dreaming, too: of needles, IV drips, rows and rows of school banks. (And then there’s Winwin in the train; you get the sense that SM really wanted to center him prominently in NCT’s music video universe, and it never panned out.) Everything is connected, interacting, but nobody said that the connection could be done in a lucid manner; all members look dazed one way or another, even the mostly-awake Doyoung, and they can’t stop this other reality from happening to themselves. NCT 127 (and this, too, is NCT 127) would end up with music video imagery more trippy than this, operating on even stronger dream logic than “Without You” does, a music video already plenty trippy, uninterested to explain or conclude anything. But the dazed eyes on Jaehyun, who is confused about being awake in a dream, and the equally absent-looking Taeil (probably sleep-deprived, as we find out in the music video behind) leave a strong impression.
The song is produced by Yoo Youngjin, architect of many iconic SM tracks; Taeil is a worthy match to his demo vocals, especially in those soaring high vocals near the end. But Jaehyun, a conventional vocalist in SM at the time, and Doyoung, whose crystal clear tones make a perfect balance between the two, are no slackers, either. This is a track that sounds a little like a Coca-Cola advertisement in the vocals and generally upbeat markings of EDM drums and electric guitars. But what a force it creates. It’s adrenaline shot directly into the ear, the type of track that could make you fly by sheer force of will, turn every single moment to a moment fitting a main character. The track invites to dream into Inception-like dreams within dreams. Together with “The 7th Sense”, it forms the other pillar of NCT 127 music: electric guitars. Not exactly rock — never fully rock — but it does serve as the distillation of SM’s forays into rock and metal music since at least TVXQ.
Fire Truck
In the New Culture Technology keynote, Lee Soo-man says: “If you have enjoyed SM’s music and performance during the time of our first idol group [H.O.T] grew to become a mother of two children, you will definitely experience a more profound and broad world through various music, contents and new culture that SM and SM’s celebrities will make from now on.” What a thought: you start out as a fan of H.O.T as a teenager and end up a mother of two children still bleeding SM’s color, pink. Why stop there, though? You could still be an SM fan as a grandmother, and SM will still be there for your grandchildren. We’re all bleeding pink, God-SM willing. That’s the idea behind NCT 127’s debut music video, “Fire Truck”. Our main lead, a white girl, builds sandcastles at the playground. But there are her personal seven demons, boys in odd clothing and odder hair styles towering over her, spraying her sandcastle down with hoses. She grows up and goes to school; they are there, perennially young and odd, interrupting chemistry class. They’re here when she’s trying to kiss a boy with a vacant stare; they’re there in a 90s office as she gets a stern talking to by her supervisor; when she’s got married and had kids. But, as the bridge helpfully points out, NCT 127 only had good intentions: there was a lit match near the sandbox; something was boiling in chemistry class; the boy didn’t want her, it was a dare and money was involved; somebody was about to steal company data with a floppy disk; there was water near the plug. In the end, they’re looking over her grandchild while she sleeps (or is dead). God-SM willed NCT 127 to exist forever, and they will always look odd.
As a debut, “Fire Truck” is immensely spirited and grabs your attention from the first Get it lifted! on. The percussion bubbles in what’s no doubt inspired by the late SOPHIE, taking most of the chorus in a satisfying climax. Yes, there’s sirens akin to an actual firetruck, there’s members imitating horns (“WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP! Fire truck.”) and horns swirling in the mix. Jaehyun shifts over to rap here, leaving Haechan (a high-pitched tenor) and Taeil to the prechorus. The song functions great as a performance-heavy track, whether that’s the group or the listener in some club. It’s absolutely obnoxious, a clear successor to Big Bang’s 2015 “Bang Bang Bang”. But it keeps melodic elements intact, its instrumental break supports the song rather than detract it, and as a result, “Fire Truck” has staying power in the ear. It’s one of their most conventional titles, and not moving while the song plays becomes a challenge. Why resist, though? As they say in the bridge: dance, my party people!
Limitless
The performance music video is janky, cutting between members and unit shots too much too soon, zooms to and fro as if the director was giddy at the possibility that NCT 127 are one part of something larger, a unit that has no beginning and no ending. There’s a couple lingering shots of new members Doyoung and Johnny, the former wide-eyed and wearing a beanie to really frame the eyes, the latter half-lidded and angular, oozing distanced cool. In the Rough version, they are in a room of an abandoned warehouse, standing next to one another, Johnny to the left and Doyoung to the right. Johnny turns to Doyoung as he lipsyncs to the track. Doyoung’s eyes are on the camera. It’s as if he stares past it, and directly to the viewer — in one moment, he holds a glowing book above his head, and it’s just those eyes, part expectation, part surprise, part vacant.
It’s an uncanny effect that much of the Rough version replicates through grainy camcorder footage, footage within footage, unfocused close-ups, members cut off the frame. Various NCT 127 members do something and abruptly stop when they notice the camera. They all cover their eyes with their hands; all turn around at the same time; all break out to dance at random moments. Change the heavy world, Jaehyun says, and there’s a cut of Taeil from the bridge only to cut again to a night scene with sparklers moving around in harmony. Jaehyun sings along to the bridge only to stop at some point to chew gum. It’s disconcerting, almost from a dream. Accordingly, “Limitless” opens with Taeyong chanting: “The dream last night that shook my world / is it a nightmare or am I still inside of it?” as if chanting that two people sit on a tree. Rough ver. is the nightmare. It is a world unto itself, that warehouse. And all the members stare expecting the viewer to know this, too.
In 2016, EXO’s third album EX’ACT, featuring the double lead singles “Monster” and “Lucky One” presented the most extreme forms of the EXO formula: the strongest take of their loud, aggressive music on one side, and their melodic, shimmering pop sensibilities on the other. EX’ACT featured “Artificial Love” right after those two tracks, a propulsive dance track produced by MZMC originally meant for NCT (I like to think you can hear it). For their second single, “Monster” producer Kenzie offered a second take of the song for NCT 127, and you hear parts of that in “Limitless”: a militaristic precision in drum loops and vocals, a certain desperation. But “Monster” only touches on its militaristic nature; its chorus reveals a satisfactory climax of drama and yearning. The chorus of “Limitless”, meanwhile, has all the members sing in a choir. The percussion is a perfect trap drill. The bass snakes through the song, adding to the ominous vibe. When an individual steps forward — Taeyong here, Johnny there — the choir immediately reels them back in, fusing them back to a limitless “me”, singing a song that is only getting louder, in an explosive world stretching from East to West that fuses the protagonist and the listener to one. EXO’s world is one of binaries: you and me, goddesses and monsters. NCT 127’s world — that hardened world, the heavy world that needs changing — limits are pieces to erode through sheer willpower. Dream is reality, tomorrow is today, the world is a nightmare or vice versa, you are me. Eventually, we’re all connected, Doyoung sings in the bridge as though this is the most obvious thing in the world: you know this. Taeil, not much later, sings of finding the ocean at the end of a desert — the child’s reality, the seventh sense, Taeyong’s dream. All is connected, and infinity will be achieved eventually. It’s an assault of a track. It is one of their best.
Cherry Bomb
A slimy beat that dominates the song, chanting in the chorus — or really on just about any auditory surface available, which is quite a lot, as it turns out. With a synth line that sounds like an empty hallway just before all the lights turn out one by one in a horror movie, this is not a track in which you and I come together to erode all limits to infinite ourselves. This track is about having bombs for meal, being the biggest hit on the stage, cherries in the sky high. If you happy and you know it, clap your hands, yo, one of the most ridiculous lines intoned in K-Pop, is said here in the most threatening tone imaginable — as a hook. Very few singing, an entire bridge devoted to Mark rapping: “Cherry Bomb” defines NCT 127’s discography in the collective imagination through one succinct punch of a song. The biggest hit on the stage: originally a phrase that Johnny said to cheer himself up at a difficult choreography, “Cherry Bomb“ turns it to something akin to the Eleventh Commandment. “Cherry Bomb” marks the first time American producer DemJointz produces a track for NCT 127, and it’s without his iconic “Incoming” producer tag (back then, it was And now, the breakdown in the middle eight). The collaboration wouldn’t end there, though — far from it. “Cherry Bomb” is one fantastic foundation of it all, and remains one of their best songs still, both DemJointz’s and NCT 127’s.
Though the song itself has little to do with new worlds, the music video freely mixes heat vision with real vision, animation that washes over the screen only to harden in big pixels. Members glitch out of and into existence, are zoomed in and out, and don’t look like they were originally having fun in that warehouse; this is the hall from which NCT 127 declare their world dominance. A song like “Cherry Bomb” could only make sense in the coldest environment imaginable, where you could be dragged while sitting on a sofa like Johnny is in the music video. The music video portrays the kind of urban malaise where you live at the very fringes of the metropolis, where your local spot is a local grocery store, really a shitty piece of concrete. The biggest fun you can have comes from blowing up cherry bombs? No matter. Eventually, giant cherries will fall from the sky. And still you’re the biggest hit on the stage.
Limitless - Japanese Version, Chain
For the Japanese version of “Limitless”, the ETUI Collective connected some of the imagery of the original music video — the grainy footage, the strong usage of red, urban decay as background setting — with ideas on their own that built of the idea of infinity: tapes that wound and rewound, a television perpetually on, bodies in motion on a staircase zoomed from up. The eroding borders are now literal, what with curtains burning and members disappearing within — so suffice to say that this is dreamy, but more concerned with angularity. It doesn’t immediately grab like the original Korean music video. ETUI Collective has stronger and better material with NCT 127, so “Limitless” makes for a good first taste. I do enjoy seeing Jaehyun lipsync Taeyong’s “baby I want nobody but you”, though.
The path “Limitless” opened up went both ways.. One hand, it was in the music videos: set in an urban landscape, videos filled with various beauty shots and rave-like situations, all of it bordering on something akin to a dream, but the Japanese discography in general that pushed towards NCT 127’s electronic side. Their first original single for the Japanese market, the music video for “Chain” combines flowers inside a well-lit fluorescent truck, backgrounds of dawn with stark elevators. When Johnny lifts up a chainsaw, its sonic equivalent doesn’t fall far behind. There’s a franticness to “Chain”, both the song and the music video, as though it can’t contain the beauty for too long lest it ultimately succumb to the electric screwdrivers going off. It makes the From Seoul and to Tokyo beauty shots that marks that each member dons on their faces all the more worthy of a contrast. The song itself is a drill (ha!) of a hook, stacking them on top of one another to great success.
Touch
There comes a time in SM groups’ discographies where the lore doesn’t seem feasible, where the company cedes to the wishes of the fans and hands the group a “cute” concept, or maybe altogether makes them more palatable so more people can become fans of the group. Later, the lore can come back — it often did — but the one moment of normalcy (or two…) leaves a bookmark for non-fans and ex-fans years later that has them say, “maybe if they did this more often.” For the 2018 NCT project, every NCT unit did NCT 127 things… except 127 itself, which decidedly went pop — or a form of pop, anyway. “Touch” utilizes doo-wop-esque harmonies locked in a teeth-grit battle with the rhythm. When one charges forward, the other disappears. A “Growl” or even “Hello” this is not. But aren’t they all just so cute. Wow, Taeyong is smiling on a music video. Look how cute Yuta can be when he isn’t glaring at the camera! They’re pulling a rope… and you’re on the other end! The N of NCT stands for iNteraction! I’m whelmed!
Years later, Doyoung would go on an interview and say that after this song, the group made the decision to do weird music. For that reason alone, Touch makes for an indelible inclusion into the NCT 127 canon.
Regular
I once woke myself up from a nightmare and got so dizzy my brain conjured an image of my hand stretched out in front of my eyes; in reality, it was under my pillow. (The dream last night that shook my world…) This same space — being half-awake and half-asleep, stuck between reality and dream, nightmare and ambition, is one that NCT 127 explore a lot in their titles and music videos. Haus of Team (then known as a team under Dazed Korea magazine), directing the opening trailers for NCT 127’s first full length record Regular-Irregular, makes this connection literal: an escape from the boring, regular corporate life, towards an irregular one — a place where you can mix up wine with cherry tomatoes, read comics under your office desk with stuffed toys all around you, printing out money just by scanning your face. That there’s members who are so good-looking that the regularity aspect becomes a tough sell is part of the point.
Lead single “Regular”, a fun track that is liberally inspired by Cardi B’s smash hit “I Like It”, has two music videos for its two versions, with very little differing between the two. Winwin jumps off a building earlier in the Korean version; Mark walks with a CGI tiger earlier in the English version. The idea remains the same: the city as an endless possibility, as colorful as a kaleidoscope at night with all the neon lights around, a place you can enter with enough riches (and they do, as sung in the English version; the Korean is more about how cool the team is). Cars, as a status symbol, plays an important role for the first time — much later, an entire lead single would be centered around them. The dizzying, blurred images in the English version make “Regular” seem like a dream. This isn’t happening, and once again, what is happening is barred to Gokart rounds and on top of a roof where nobody else is around. What a sad, regular life that is. How fun a night out can be in all its irregularity.
Simon Says
Since the beginning, NCT hinges on Taeyong: his sharp features and warm eyes give his visuals a manga character edge. Then there is the preciseness of his dancing and his drawling rap, a natural fit for the trap of the NCT soundscape. It makes sense, then, to see him first in “Simon Says”, pulling up a chair as the other members circle around him with elaborate masks on. “Simon Says”: the warehouse from which they’ve once declared their world domination has now simultaneously shrunk (it barely looks like a studio when Taeyong walks in) and expanded, becoming a giant conference room from which Winwin, the last time he’s in a NCT 127 release, is pulled away from into an endless void. There is a designer car in a small room where it couldn’t race. The world dominance in question has become step one of an already fulfilled plan: lines like Cast a spell, I’m God and Who can talk against me, who? / Bless me, achoo suggest that the group is on a plane of existence hitherto hinted at in previous releases: a godlike existence wrapped in an auditory trancelike haze that may or may not have a maleficent energy. In the end, they step on the masks, and the credits flash.
A spiritual sequel to “Cherry Bomb”, “Simon Says” is even less accessible, even deeper in its own mythology, and all the better for it. A trap song that still retains some pop ideas, the sole instrumentation at the back is various distorted percussion and a second bubblier one – nevertheless, the chorus explodes at the right moment, and “Mine mine mine mine mine” makes for an intense, hypnotizing chant. Vocals are distorted, sidelined for the big rapping and great attitude. In various interviews, the group talks about the intense nature of this track, but also its aspirational quality: that it’s about “tapping into the real you” and seizing the moment. That moment occurs at the climax: Don’t be afraid, the only one stopping you is yourself, Doyoung sings gently. Fall deep inside that moment in which, Taeil continues a little later, you find your true self between reality and dream, sung as if he’s going to find that true self right this instant. But between reality and dream, though, is a space seemingly only ever visited by NCT 127. The gods of the trance state get so bored of their solitary existence that they play characters that obey this god. “Simon says we’re the real vibe killer” as a chorus line doesn’t make sense at face value, only as declaration that Simon is the god of the game, and you better not disturb him too much. Who is Simon? It could be them, but it could be you, too.
Wakey-Wakey
One moment, they want you to find your true self between dream and reality and the next they want you to wake up. Men! “Wakey-Wakey” is the kind of Charli XCX-esque rave that NCT 127 made their calling card in their Japanese discography. The successor to “Chain”, “Wakey-Wakey”’s main conceit is an earworm so metallic and catchy that its bludgeoning effect works like a charm. There’s a bouncy energy to “Wakey-Wakey” that is never interrupted. The vocals are all over the song, mixed roughly the same way as the beeping synth line.
The music video adds to the beautiful-edgy imagery of “Chain”: member closeups glitch out ever so slightly, just enough to make the picture even more beautiful. There are cars again, this time not in the same place as flowers. Haechan is in the middle of a exhibition area, asleep. The others are maybe also asleep and just wake up: there’s a lot of opening eyes. It’s suggested that they have superpowers, or at least Taeil’s coffee rises up on its own from the cup. Doyoung wears a ring with eye motif, the diamond studded version to the one he wore in “Limitless”’s performance music video. Everyone is trying to wake up Haechan. Do they succeed in it? Find out before the music video cuts to the performance box that looks like so many of SM’s older music videos. Haechan, meanwhile, must be living his true self between dream and reality: the world blurs around him when he maybe-sorta wakes up. Hard not to when this song is playing. Johnny commands it so: “Wake up right now. You gotta wakey…”
Highway to Heaven, Superhuman
“Highway to Heaven” is the kind of neon-drenched, high-sheen slowburn drama that was already familiar to audiences before NCT 127 did it— it’s as though someone Scandinavic had heard the tropical house wave and chosen to write a song for the Eurovision Song Contest (for Sweden, naturally). The wide shots utilized in the music video reflects the cinematic scope of “Highway to Heaven”, but by and large it is a song completely devoid of anything that NCT 127 had done before (even “Touch”!) What’s so upsetting about the rare times NCT 127 employs a mainstream pop sound is that NCT 127 has been posited as weird, off-kilter, even inaccessible music — that moment of twenty boys in masks surrounding journalists at the press conference is not exactly the normal way to introduce a new group. NCT 127 means sonic and visual spectacle, one that isn’t supposed to make sense the first time. “Highway to Heaven” makes sense — sometimes charmingly so, like in the chorus, oftentimes offensively so, which is everything else.
“Superhuman”, the actual release of the American-marketed EP We are Superhuman, is as accessible as “Highway to Heaven” is, but in a distinct K-Pop way. The electronic bass that ran through “Highway to Heaven” are on prominent display with Superhuman in a way that distinctly recalls efforts by senior group SHINee, particularly “Everybody” — a Motown-inspired vocal melody that bursts at the seams with synths all around them to aspirational goals of achieving someone’s goals and finding/revealing your true self. The music video isn’t exactly clear in what ways NCT 127 are superhuman — there’s infinite amounts of Doyoung one moment, and the next, he’s sitting behind keyboards with that wide-eyed look of his. There’s Jaehyun and Jungwoo suspended in air. There’s a very futuristic and good-looking Taeyong in a corridor that looks like a rave happened inside a spaceship. But one gets the job done. “Superhuman” is a forceful and energetic song, but again offers little on what makes NCT 127 special. Just enough fuel, though, for fans to want this sound back whenever NCT 127 got abrasive again… which they would, but almost a year after the fact.
Kick It
The song was originally called Bruce Lee, or at least that’s what the members call the song as they record it. He’s namechecked in every chorus and even in one verse: “Andi’mgonnakickitlikeBruceLee”, no spaces, in one breath. His martial philosophy Jeet Kune Do and last film Enter The Dragon are namechecked in the rap section, but other than that, Bruce Lee, who passed away at 32 in 1973, is relegated to mentions of bass kicks that swing like him. Other moves of note: punching left and right, flying all day, fighting for all day. (Also, per Jaehyun’s line that he intones with the casual boredom of an endboss: “Dropping a bomb on my enemies…”) The title this song was eventually released in, both English and Korean, underscore the almost superhuman power of Bruce Lee’s stunts: Hero in Korean, Kick It in English.
The song brings NCT 127 back to the territory of sonic assault: metal riffs that have nothing to do with the genre, aggressive chanting, spitfire rapping, trap drums, but also piano notes and a drill in the verses. In the lyrics there is, once again, stuff about finding your true self, moving forward (no more trauma!), making new worlds, all through violence. Unsurprisingly, DemJointz is back to helm it. It’s not his most abrasive work, not his masterpiece, with NCT 127 just yet, but it is the strongest, and even if that’s just off the bridge’s alone — the part where Taeil’s voice, declaring that he’s reborn in the dark, becomes one with strings and warped synths going as the same riff as the metal one in the chorus, and a robotic “Oh-okay”. Then the chorus comes back for the last time with a “shimmy shimmy shimmy hoo!”, totally lost to feeling. This is the new thangs they keep chanting about. This is what Haechan means in his verse when he says, “Baby, you can’t understand this feeling logically.”
Bruce Lee and his legacy do hover more strongly in the music video, positioning NCT 127 as martial arts movie heroes — or maybe villains, the way Jaehyun, wearing a luxurius piece of cloth with a deep V-cut, looks smolderingly at the camera. There is life and death at stake here: Taeil sits against a motorcycle only to later have all motorcycles pointed at him as he sings in the rain; the camera pans wide to reveal Johnny defeating masked cyclers; there’s shots of various NCT 127 members wielding nunchucks, kicking, sending enemies flying just like they declare in the song. (No bombs, though.) In the bridge — that bridge of new thangs — the rain stops and moves on only when Taeyong snaps his fingers. The city — Neo Zone, like the album that “Kick It” is the lead single of — is one of pure violence. To survive is to fight your way up. It is a world of yellow and of rain. You fight for all day. (Notably, Doyoung is never seen fighting, only looking sad with yellow neon lights behind him.) You make your own world. In the darkness, you’re reborn. We go wild, 127 squad, we’ll show you new thangs, they say. And they do.
Punch
“Punch” turns the world of “Kick It” to pure artifice within an instant, and all of it has to do with calling the release of the repackage album FINAL ROUND. In the world of wrestling, villains and heroes come together to one satisfying showdown where the only thing that matters is raw power (or, as it’s said in the song, styles make a fight). The second and final round of Neo Zone, then, extends the round by having Doyoung sing, “My show goes on.” Accordingly, there’s horns, big drums, and the loud chanting that appeared last time on Kick It. But there’s also that bassline, sounding like the buzz of a CRT television come to life, as the members… whisper on it. The song isn’t exactly brief at 3:24, but sounds like it’s done within an instant, an aggressive track that didn’t capitalize on either the loudest or the most villainous of NCT 127’s capabilities. On initial release, people said they didn’t remember how the song went; hard not to when there’s little besides whispering in the verses, a little singing in the prechorus, and loud chanting in the chorus. This is still not the most extreme that NCT 127 would get, but perhaps a good sign for what was to truly come. Musically, they were already pushing to the very ends of K-Pop — they say it in the song too: “As high as we can get / As loud as we can get / The trend will be set”, though whether they did set a trend with whispering through “Punch” or not is questionable.
As is the case with other NCT 127 titles, here, too, are mentions of new worlds: “My own universe, a very long fight in it” goes one line, and “You’re my only exit” — far from calling someone to their world, the gods of trance seek to fight their way out of it. (They lose, but A for effort.) Several members appear in washed-out, psychedelic backgrounds, looking battered and bruised and still choosing to fight their way out by punching at the camera, while others are in a hallway sitting contemplatively. The music video blurs the line of reality, but not to dreamlike effect this time, rather a zone in which the punches are the only thing that matters and everything else washes out like colors activated in water. If “Kick It” was very bright, this one is either dark or in various shades of blue, furthering the idea of “Punch” as a complementary color rather than a straightforward sequel. In the dream world that they’re in, the long fight may not end, but at least they’ll do it without regrets. Maybe they’re not villains on this one, but protagonists, a sound that is slightly awkward on them; either way, their show goes on.
gimme gimme
“gimme gimme” answers a question I never knew I had: what if “The Seventh Sense” married “Wakey-Wakey” and they had a child? The answer is that this child somehow ends up the perfect mix of its parents: the sludgy, slow pace mixed with industrial beats and rave-like sounds. The latter keeps on happening even while the other members are actually singing verses and raps and choruses on it, even in the break, in which there’s even more electronic moments happening. Just like the song itself, the music video only has nondescreipt sets it freely swaps between: the backroom of some engineering place, though it’s unclear where; another corridor with nothing but metals in which only Taeyong and Mark appear in; two studios; the backside of a construction site. When another member takes the place, there’s the same effect as Twilight vampires teleporting. One moment, it’s Taeyong, and the next, it’s Johnny, coolly looking at the camera.
Though it reveals most of its tricks from its first chord on, the song has a hypnotizing quality to it. It is also the song where Taeyong uses the line “spicy disease,” and a case for NCT’s most romantic lead single can be made with this song — with the usual aggressive charm of their soundscape. Machines can fall in love, too, and talk of king’s games and magic spells. gimme gimme’s ghost in the machine is the beautiful vocal work in the middle of it all, particularly from Doyoung in his few lines. The desperate quality of gimme gimme shines through through the trance-like state of the machine. Even in a song that isn’t about other worlds, NCT 127 always sound like they try to reach someone else from across the screen through sheer willpower.
Save
From the late 2000s on, SM groups have collaborated with various brands, with a surefire deal that benefited both parties: ad songs, which brought coin to the group and exposure to the product. Girls’ Generation has a whole host of advertisement tracks and endorsement deals. Most notable to the NCT 127 Potpourri here is the track Girls’ Generation to advertise the newest processing cores from Intel that rolled out early 2011 and boasted dual and quad core-variants: Visual Dreams, a song with Kraftwerk-esque synthesizers and singtalking most of the time. It is pure electropop euphoria and stands apart from the rest of Girls’ Generation’s discography — too digitized to belong to their Korean catalogue, too robotic to take place in their Japanese discography. Fortunately for NCT 127, “Save” — the track advertising Samsung’s DRAM — isn’t very far from their stellar lead singles. In fact, its house elements fulfill an early promise of their discography way back with “Fire Truck” and their first mini album: the idea of NCT as a musical project for the club. The chorus pops the tension of the pre-chorus in a satisfying manner, and the flutes work tremendously well with the spoken word “Save you, save me, save our memo-ries”.
As one of their best tracks in their discography, Save manages to not only pack in environmental issues (too many satellites above, saving memories), vague references to a RAM (storing in the same way a RAM would read and write memory into the same location), but also brings back the universe as NCT 127’s stage. Their stage is the universes, they’re going space opera! The same idea persists in the music video, which is either a space station that is overgrown with plants if they just generate RAM (a blue square on which is a blue pictogram of… a floppy disk?) from the palm of their hands and insert it on some dashboard. Alternatively, they’re inside a dome in which NCT 127 dance and look at the camera with the expectation that they’ll be freed from the cage. There’s also a glass box on which Jaehyun often leans against but is never inside of. One way or another, everything is “The 7th Sense”; one way or another, everything is neo culture technology. (Samsung, at the time of this writing, is on track of developing 16GB DDR5 RAM — faster and cheaper RAM.)
Sticker
At the end of the Who is STICKER video, the introduction to the third full-length album by NCT 127, we are none the wiser at answering the question the title poses. Not unlike the Regular-Irregular introduction, Who is STICKER separates a NCT 127 that are “normal” computer science students (un-compsci-esque nerd cosplay, unnerdy good looks and an abundance of glasses aside, you do not use soldering iron without solder, but points for featuring it) and one that is dark and wired in. Take this literally: the room drops in lighting considerably, Haechan is tangled up in various cables, and Jungwoo plugs in something into a laptop which then makes the laptop screen flash the number 127. Plugged in, with a new screen, they are the life of the party… and the party this time is on computer screens, in lines of code. Nothing glitches out here, because these computer science students know better than to release code with bugs.
Roll up to the party: in the world of “Sticker”, the party is a world of outlet stores and improbable cowboys. Duels are made by biting the lower lip and throwing hats. Hearts, glasses and even mannequins are shot at, lassos are thrown, cars buckle up like horsepower contains actual horses inside. And dogs can be cowboys, too. The video almost looks benign next to the song, a cacophony with very little regard for traditional structure or anything that K-Pop fans seek out in a song. It’s driven by two things that it immediately reveals to the listener: the flute — that flute — and a strange, slinky bass followed immediately after. A wooden percussion trickles along. Sometimes, piano plays. Members sing over this barebones melody with a classic Yoo Youngjin melody without a care in the world (though, in reality, a good amount of them looked like they had no idea what to make of this song the first time they heard it). What does the song even communicate? Falling in love, a force so big it could collide two worlds, and on this planet, we call it L-O-V-E. Sure. But also: declaring the listener both scribe of their history and the protagonists of masterpieces. The lyrics give off the feeling that Sticker is about the exhilarating feeling of being a fan of a group for the first time, its reciprocal energy at performances.
That’s not how it sounds, though. It sounds a little like some people decided to make music after some apocalypse rendered humanity with no access to instruments, only a percussion, a flute, and some piano. It has no relation to anything released in 2021. Yoo Youngjin — who Taeil emulates with absolute ease in the chorus adlib — and DemJointz fused the best of their abilities to this towering track. And it all culminates in the best thirteen seconds in NCT 127’s title track catalogue: the futuristic, synth-y explosion where the flute steps out of line and the percussion gets metallic and thunders to the climax, and all that’s said is to roll up to the party. Forget new worlds. Dreams are useless. We’re all rolling up to the party. They told us to dance, “my party people”, all the way back in 2016. It’s a good thing they say “you” are the protagonist of this masterpiece. Thanks, NCT 127!
Favorite (Vampire)
Taeyong simply knows that there’s a butterfly there. Maybe he pretended to sleep all this time — or maybe he’s supernatural and senses the butterfly like an anime character in full control of ki. He doesn’t even open his eyes, just his mouth, revealing fangs, and letting the butterfly enter his mouth wholesale. The butterfly, in turn, brings us to a new world. The world — perhaps it’s better to call it worlds — contains thorns, apples, bathtubs filled with blood, fields full of roses, glitter, abysses… more butterflies… but most notably, it has vampires of the Twilight kind: ones with creepy eyes, with the ability to teleport and glitter dramatically. A striking Jaehyun reveals fresh bite marks and sings “Your love is dangerous and incomplete” with a little sway as if he was just bitten, and it adds to the idea of the protagonist being both victim and perpetrator of something so worth it that the violence is a prerequisite to the end. That “something”, as it is usually the case, is love.
“Favorite (Vampire)”, the third song that Kenzie wrote for NCT 127 (and co-produced with legendary producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins) delves deep into the pain: the members give a yearning, impassionate performance throughout the track (even a line like, “you are my favorite” sounds like it’s said with the final breath of someone close to dying), with a militaristic percussion just like “Limitless” giving the song its marching beat. This track, as it turns out, was almost a title for EXO’s repackaged sixth album, which was scrapped. It’s hard to hear EXO on this, though some sonic ideas of theirs are present somewhat in “Favorite”. The song is stunning — a whistle guiding most of the song come hell or high water, contemplative in the verses (with an almost hilariously over-the-top hmm peppered throughout), explosive in the chorus — but its insistence to overwhelm with the most pain possible almost feel at odds with the usual NCT 127 fare, less futuristic and more fantastical. Not that this deterred Doyoung: on the release of the song, he shared a lengthy Instagram story about how much he liked the song. He has many beautiful moments on this track, especially in the bridge. He also looks otherworldly in the music video. But “Favorite” feels patchy as a video, and not exactly in the incoherent way of a dream. There is more an attempt to maximize the individuality of these beauty shots. There are fragments that are beautiful: that rapid blinking of Yuta’s eyes revealing something inhuman, the closeups of Johnny and Jaehyun. If there was a synchronization of dreams before, this is the atomization of it. Which of these nightmares shook Taeyong’s world? By the time the butterfly is out of Taeyong’s mouth, he’s sleeping again. We’ll never know.
2 Baddies
Ahead of the release of new title “2 Baddies”, which came almost a year after “Favorite” did, the group mentioned that this was their most “NCT 127” title yet. Musically, it is true — there was a formula now, one that other groups copied to little success, so anytime when NCT 127 came back, they could simply remind everyone why this formula exists in the first place. Perhaps that’s unfair to say of a group that is so singular in its musical abilities — but it’s not a bad thing to sound like yourself, and to “2 Baddies”’ (major!) credit, there is a great energy to the song, a jovial attitude that was not present in NCT 127 lead singles before. The lyrics never make too much sense (”Too fast, T_T / movement is Blues Clues” is a particularly puzzling one), but a general impression can be made: driving fast, being a baddie with a Porsche (changed in performances to “squad”), and setting the tone. All of this has been covered in previous NCT 127 songs before.
Perhaps what lends the song such a joy is the fact that they no longer need to prove their godhood or declare world domination. They’re there already, ahead of everyone else. A high speed implies an inverse proportion to the anxiety of crashing somewhere, and NCT 127 never crash the track. Even the energetic middle eight, their fifth (sixth if you count the breakdown in the “Favorite” music video) in a lead single of theirs, sounds familiar in a good way. We’re truly done dreaming. This is reality…
…is something I’d say, except the music video is a trip and a half. Acidic colors leak from the screen. Members are in neon lit tunnels sporting odd hats and stranger canes (or, in Jaehyun’s case, a leather jacket). They perform the song under a giant car body, as if it was a dinosaur fossil. Yuta drives an elevator up in an animated world behind him. Doyoung is driving a car as if he could singlehandedly travel through time with the car. On his wheels he brings “Cherry Bomb”’s hand-drawn aesthetic to 2022, so fast that it makes his entire body shake. Johnny, chest wide open, looks at the camera as if he already expects the question why he’s in the passenger seat to a car seemingly driving by itself. And the bridge: when fluorescent paint appears on Jaehyun’s, Taeyong’s, Johnny’s, and Yuta’s body, as they dance in the dark tunnel and flash grills, Doyoung’s “Nothing can stand in our way” feels like an understatement somehow. What do you do when you’re at the top? Sit on your throne, dance on the roof with a car body swinging on top of you, and watch everyone else struggle.
Ay-Yo
“Sick of the games, you’re craving for a change up.” It’s the last line that Jaehyun raps before (lest the crave turn bad) Taeyong takes over briefly. For seven years now, this has been NCT 127’s musical manifesto. They changed things up so much that it’s become the new norm, that even their own seniors release songs that could reasonably be called NCT-esque. K-Pop — boygroup K-Pop, at least — has atomized since 2016. You can be the biggest boyband in the world to the worshipping fandom. Billboard 200 #1s (let alone Billboard Hot 100 #1s) don’t have to mean anything besides the buying power of the fandom — in one region. Despite that, though, the music sounds alike. Everyone is deadly serious at the things they say and perform, or deadly serious at selling how cute they are.
Of course, NCT 127 is no different at being deadly serious and deadly handsome. And “Ay-Yo” has the science down to a T: DemJointz producing, Kenzie with the topline, trap drills, piano flourishes, a meanspirited beat that sounds like the 2023 update of an arcade game fight, propulsive claps, even sirens. There’s equal amounts of singing (belting, even), rapping, and chanting. Shows must go on, things will never be the same. It’s up to you what you want to do, especially with your tomorrow. Haters lay low, cause we’re in the god realm Valhalla now. Jaehyun has no sung line, returning to rapping and occasionally hilarious spoken word moments where all he says is “Ay-yo.” But for a song that declares the need for change-ups, the song is uninterested in disrupting its own fabric. There are tiny adlibs — a well-placed woo, a brief yeah, a triumphant ha. And then there’s that chorus. From the first line on — “Just call it out — ay-yo!” “Ay-Yo” makes its intention clear: this is a time of celebration. The synth and the pads work together for a big, digitized moment of a champion walk. There’s no fighting here, though they’ll leave nothing behind, not even ashes. The show is not a fight, but a concert — maybe an assault (to the ear, to the eye) in some ways, but in many others a release of serotonin. Seven years in, NCT 127 declare their victory lap, and “Ay-Yo” sounds so grand that it invites you to celebrate your victories alongside.
The first verse also talks about a paradigm suddenly coming down to crash, from which mythical beings come out of it, gods and humans mingling in the same place. The place in question are the many closed spaces in which NCT 127 roam around in the video: a corridor from which Yuta levitates by meditating, Johnny who flies by walking. Taeyong has his hair gelled up as if he’s come out of either Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy, while Doyoung lies on a tunnel as a pitch-perfect seducer variant of Matrix’s Neo and Jaehyun, in ridiculous square sunglasses, recalls the alien-hunting Men in Black. That warehouse from which they’ve declared their world dominance; the god games they’ve played in Simon Says that required unmasking; the trippy fantasy world of racing in 2 Baddies — all of it culminates in the Ay-Yo music video without bludgeoning the fan with needless references. This is Valhalla. If you hate it, lay low. Or try shouting out Ay-yo.
Continued on part two: