BORDER : DAY ONE

The record

BORDER : DAY ONE is ENHYPEN’s debut mini album, released on 30 November 2020 with six tracks. The debut song is ‘Given-Taken’. The seven members are the last contestants standing on Mnet’s I-LAND, which ran for about three months from June 2020, and the group is signed to BELIFT LAB, the company CJ ENM and Big Hit Entertainment set up together.

BELIFT LAB’s album introduction on Bugs describes a record about boys standing on a border. The same text says the group’s name works the way a hyphen does, connecting seven people who grew up in different places so that they discover one another and grow together, and that boys standing on the new border of a debut feel the relief of having survived and the unease of what comes next at the same time. The visual concept is split into two versions, ‘DAWN’ and ‘DUSK’, for the border between day and night.

Reviews

Dazed placed ‘Given-Taken’ 34th in ‘The 40 best K-pop songs of 2020’, published on 19 December 2020. Taylor Glasby, who wrote the list, put the debut down as one that “goes for a slightly subdued but highly polished approach”, pointing to “a flowing chorus, well-balanced harmonies, and an intriguing vampire concept”.

Among the tracks

The album introduction files the title track ‘Given-Taken’ as pop hip-hop. The same text says the song asks whether the dream of a debut was given to the members or taken by them, and that it carries the tangle of feelings seven people have at a starting line reached after a long stretch.

The introduction walks through the other five tracks too. ‘Intro : Walk the Line’ sings the moment when pain turns into elation as the boys who survived step into the world they had been dreaming of, and ‘Let Me In (20 CUBE)’ is about longing for a new world, which is also the space of the person they love. ‘10 Months’ likens the fluttering, clumsy stretch of new love to a ten-month-old puppy, ‘Flicker’ sends a signal to the other person and joins two worlds, and ‘Outro : Cross the Line’ closes the first day and points to the step over the line that follows.

Afterwards

The second mini album BORDER : CARNIVAL followed five months later and carried the BORDER series on.