Chewing Gum

The record

Chewing Gum is NCT DREAM’s debut single, released on 27 August 2016. It carries the same song in a Korean and a Chinese version, and each version has a music video of its own.

The album introduction on Bugs presents NCT DREAM as the teenage unit of the group NCT and describes the debut song ‘Chewing Gum’ as a bright, upbeat teen pop dance track. The same text names the lyric’s use of chewing gum as an image for a first, tentative affection, and gives the simultaneous Korean and Chinese versions as a move toward listeners outside Korea. Thomas Troelsen and Kenzie wrote and arranged the song, and the member Mark is credited on the Korean lyric.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the single as four writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its column on the records of late August 2016. Masitneun Pahita traced a line of boy voices before the break — from Michael Jackson to Justin Bieber — and placed the group on it. “Along with a natural freshness, there is a mischievous and bracing song, and even the hoverboard choreography: what the K-pop idol scene had been missing about the essence of an idol is here,” the note reads, and it closes: “NCT really is doing only the things nobody in Korea has done.”

Yu Je-sang read the song as following the label’s bright dance music while carrying something else inside it. “‘Chewing Gum’ does, first of all, keep to the bright SM dance-music line,” the note reads, and it goes on: “And yet the ‘tension’ the NCT brand carries — that feeling that something is about to happen out of nowhere — is well alive in it, so the thought ‘ah, so this is how they are unfolding the groups’ comes to the listener’s head naturally.” Haemchwa of the same outlet pointed at the weave of the backing and the harmony: “The care that takes a sound which could have felt thin under a minimal backing and makes it full with densely stacked harmony stands out.”

Among the tracks

The two tracks are the Korean and the Chinese version of one song. Yu read the Chinese version’s place on the release as a signal about the group’s next move, writing: “Come to think of it, the Chinese version of ‘Chewing Gum’ sitting there as the second track does not look ordinary.” Haemchwa singled out Mark’s rap and its role here, noting that where it had lightened heavier songs earlier that year, in this one it does the opposite: “That he plays the reverse role, holding the centre among the young voices, is interesting.”

Afterwards

The first single album The First followed six months later, on 9 February 2017, and carried the debut song again in both versions. The first mini album We Young came that August.