Cosmic

The record

Cosmic is the mini album Red Velvet released on 24 June 2024, six tracks led by ‘Cosmic’. It follows the third full-length album Chill Kill by seven months, and the album introduction on Bugs says it was timed to the group’s tenth anniversary.

The same text describes the title track as a pop dance track built on a bright bass guitar and drums with rich synth strings and a disco rhythm laid over them, and tells its story as a fairy tale: a traveller crash-lands on the singer, who was a distant star, and she learns a love as wide as the universe. KENZIE and Moonshine worked on it together again after the third album. The other five songs are ‘Sunflower’, about a sunflower in love with the sun; ‘Last Drop’, whose promise is figured as a white dwarf; ‘Love Arcade’, built on arcade sound effects; the plainly worded ‘Bubble’; and ‘Night Drive’.

Reviews

There is no album-review page for this record from the time of its release. The four pieces this page quotes are retrospectives and year-end selections published afterwards.

The first was the 127-song retrospective NME published on 1 August 2024 for the group’s tenth anniversary. Tássia Assis wrote of the title track: “Let Red Velvet take you on a journey through the solar system.” She added that “‘Cosmic’ shows that, even 10 years into the game, they are still an act to be reckoned with — lethal in their delivery, surprising in their sweetness”.

On 6 December Billboard placed ‘Cosmic’ seventh in its selection of the year’s 25 K-pop songs. The entry wrote that “the very best Red Velvet songs feel like a cat-and-mouse game, and in the dark, disco-ready ‘Cosmic,’ falling into their orbit is as inviting as ever”, and closed: “It’s just so hard to imagine wanting to escape Irene, Seulgi, Wendy, Joy and Yeri’s inevitable pull when their harmonies sound this heavenly.”

NME put the song fifth in a selection of the same kind on 11 December. That entry wrote: “So they gifted us ‘Cosmic’, a sun-kissed track sprinkled with eeriness – in true Red Velvet fashion – about a transitory love they yearn to make everlasting.” It added that “its melodies dance between radiance and gloom, however, it’s on the bridge where the song transforms into an interstellar voyage, lifted by the group’s vocal magic”.

Debashree Dutta of Rolling Stone India included it among the year’s ten K-pop songs on 23 December, writing that “a dynamic chorus, a stunning bridge section, and gorgeous, fluid melodies play up the spirit—a tranquil listening experience that gradually builds up in rhythms—a Red Velvet magic, its choral delight, and beautiful, mystical details of the synth-driven melodies”.

Among the tracks

Of ‘Last Drop’ NME’s retrospective wrote that “this bittersweet B-side is a heartfelt letter to fans, reminding them of all the sweat and tears that Red Velvet went through to be where they are”. The album introduction describes it as an R&B pop song carried by a heavy, wave-like bass and the group’s harmonies, with a promise to keep shining to the end like a white dwarf giving off light to its last moment.

Of the closing ‘Night Drive’ the same piece wrote that it is “a lovely closer to the girl group’s latest mini-album, ‘Cosmic’, this scintillating synthpop track is soft and simple, easing you into their unknown next steps”. The album introduction likens it to a drive on a night with memories set into it like stars, and to going on together in trust.

On the music video for ‘Cosmic’, Rolling Stone India wrote that “sonically alluring, ‘Cosmic’’s dreamy music video—of floral, summer-world aesthetics—gingers up the dance-pop track of synth melodies and disco beats”.

Afterwards

The next release by the full group came a little over two years later with Velvet Summer.