BORN TO BE

The record

BORN TO BE is ITZY’s eighth mini album, released on 8 January 2024 with ten tracks. The title track is ‘UNTOUCHABLE’. It came five months after KILL MY DOUBT, and it is the first ITZY record to carry a solo song from each of the five members.

The album introduction on Bugs gives the album’s name as the sense of holding your freedom and going where you want in the wide world in front of you. The same text describes ‘UNTOUCHABLE’ as mid-tempo EDM with a guitar part carrying the chorus, credits the lyrics to Lee Seu-ran and Bang Hye-hyeon, and lists Maria Marcus among the writers. By that introduction the members took part in writing and composing their own first solo songs, working with Shim Eun-jee, collapsedone and GALACTIKA among others.

Reviews

IZM’s Son Min-hyeon reviewed the record in January 2024. Of the two songs that open it he wrote that “the run of electronic dance from the very hot ‘Born to be’ into the lower-toned, medium ‘Untouchable’ draws ITZY weighing continuity against change”. He added that “this time there are clear changes alongside it as well — holding a dark track’s mood all the way through, pushing a rough guitar sound to the front, laying the vocals out around the low register”.

Billboard’s Jeff Benjamin put the record on the outlet’s July 2024 staff list of the twenty best K-pop albums of the year so far. He wrote: “Not only does Born to Be deliver some of ITZY’s most ambitious tracks yet with the maximalist title track, anthemic lead single ‘UNTOUCHABLE’ and rhythmic-yet-dreamy ‘Mr. Vampire.’ But for the first time, the ITZY members all sing and co-write solo songs to give us new insight into each of the girls.” His closing line: “ITZY’s fifth anniversary in 2024 is all the more special with this project, which lets the group’s members finally share and extend themselves more creatively.”

AllMusic’s David Crone read the ten tracks as gathered on a core thread of resilience and limitlessness, and named ‘Mr. Vampire’, last of the pre-release songs, as the record’s high point.

Among the tracks

The song all three outlets name is the third track, ‘Mr. Vampire’. IZM’s Son wrote that “‘Mr. Vampire’, which mixes future R&B with hip-hop for a languid air, may be the clever settlement here”, and that “the rap and melody lines, flowing smoothly, suit the individual character of each member better than the songs before it, and with the excess stripped away a truer face comes out”. Crone described it as a vampire-romance concept carried by catchy sonics and by the singing of Chaeryeong and Ryujin.

Of the five solo songs Son wrote that “the strategy of branching into solos is another fine clue to a turnaround”. He went on: “the arrival of ‘Crown on my head’ (Yeji) and ‘Run away’ (Ryujin) answers the earlier questions cleanly — with a fast guitar stroke pushed to the front and the scent of hard rock and pop metal about it, the pop-punk-based tracks are the freshest point on the record.” Of Lia’s song he wrote that “the case of Lia, holding an R&B softer than ‘Mr. Vampire’, is also positive in terms of widening the range”.

The same writer returned to those two songs a month later in an IZM feature about K-pop and rock living together — awkward but appealing, as its own title puts it. He wrote that ITZY “kept a title track of high-pressure electronic music while showing a strong attachment to rock on the members’ own songs”, and that “Yeji’s ‘Crown on my head’, built on a metallic guitar riff and shouted vocals, and Ryujin’s ‘Run away’ with it, both overlap clearly with hard rock and pop metal”. That piece closed on them: “a song led by a backing guitar driving downward is a break from the style ITZY have held to until now, and it settles well into the confident figure the group aim at.”

AllMusic takes in the rest of the solos. Crone wrote that “Yeji and Ryujin keep the album’s concept going on the confident ‘Crown on My Head’ and ‘Run Away,’ both anchored to anthemic guitar lines and stabbing basses, and Yuna’s ‘Yet, But’ sees her reconfigure a more traditional bubblegum pop sound for an uplifting call to dazzle in the face of difficulty”. Of Chaeryeong’s ‘Mine’ Billboard wrote of its unexpected electro-R&B grooves.

Around it

The album introduction says eight videos went out with the record: music videos for the title track ‘UNTOUCHABLE’, the opening track ‘BORN TO BE’ and the B-side ‘Mr. Vampire’, plus a video for each of the five solo tracks. By the same text the choreographer Kiel Tutin, who had worked on ‘Not Shy’ and ‘마.피.아. In the morning’, came back for it.

ITZY opened their second world tour at Jamsil Arena in Seoul on 24 and 25 February 2024. The GOLD album introduction, published that October, records the tour at 32 shows across 28 places.