Be Natural

The song

‘Be Natural’ is the second single Red Velvet released on 13 October 2014, two months after the debut ‘행복 (Happiness)’. Taeyong, then a trainee at SM Entertainment, features on it.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the track as neo soul built on a simple hip-hop beat with the structure of modern jazz, and points to the interplay of a groove-led bass and a B3 organ. By the same text the song is a new recording of an S.E.S. track written and arranged by Yoo Young-jin, and its lyric projects the feelings of a lover onto the images of childhood in a set of sensuous words.

Reviews

Mimyo of Idology (아이돌로지) published a review of the song on 11 October 2014. He began from how little the recording changes from the 2000 original, and read that as the thing which makes the song present. “Its harmony is knotty even to today’s ear, its Hammond-organ-led sound has a graceful sexiness even to today’s ear, and the 909 drums that were in fashion at the end of the nineties are crisp even to today’s ear.” After noting the segmented structure and its repeated bold key changes, he summed up what the record is asking for in a single line: listen to this song again. Of the video he wrote that the combination of Shim Jae-won’s performance direction and the camera work shows the technique settling in as one of the music video’s several languages.

The same outlet ran the single as five writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’ for the records of late October 2014. Mimyo called it there “an interesting release, with that strangeness in it”. Yu Je-sang set the recording against the original: “The singing has become far smoother than the sticky original.”

Tássia Assis of NME placed the song 41st in the 127-song retrospective the outlet published on 1 August 2024 for the group’s tenth anniversary. Writing that it is not the group’s own composition but that the remake “brewed and raised the essence of ‘velvet’ side”, she added that “it highlights the strengths of a then-budding group who would go on to perfect this kind of slinky affair throughout their career”.

Afterwards

The velvet line this single opened ran on into ‘Automatic’, one of the two title tracks on Ice Cream Cake the following March, and in March 2016 the name reached an album cover on The Velvet.