Double Knot

The song

‘Double Knot’ is a digital single Stray Kids released at 6 p.m. KST on 9 October 2019. It sits between Clé 2 : Yellow Wood, four months earlier, and Clé : LEVANTER, two months later, and it was carried onto that mini album as its second track.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the song as one that “carries the resolve to tie your shoelaces twice and run without hesitation”, and quotes the line about running anywhere and moving on after retying a loosened lace. The same text files the song under electronic trap hip-hop and says the members worked on it themselves. It also records that 3RACHA had released a song of the same title in 2017, and that this one shares only the name. The music video was shot in Los Angeles and in Korea, and the performance sets out to make the double knot of the title visible.

Reviews

Sara Conway of Clash put the song among the group’s eight essential deep cuts in 2025. She began with where it stands: “Stray Kids extended their ‘Side Effects’ era with the 2019 single ‘Double Knot.’ Through both the gritty production and sharply-cutting lyrics, the eight members capture that desperation needed to keep moving forward.” She added that although the group debuted at a major agency, “they still had to claw their way to the top.”

She read what the song holds in two parts. One is that “the group pours their hunger, conviction, and confidence all over ‘Double Knot’”. The other is that “they also grow. They tighten up their laces because they have had a taste of what they can do, but Stray Kids also know that they can do even more.” The line she took as saying so is Hyunjin’s in the English version: “I’ve been looking at a destination/ Suddenly, my vision kept on getting wider/ Looked around to see the many ways and possibilities/ I keep getting stronger.”

Around it

Conway heard the song alongside the one that came the following year. “It is fun, however, to see how ‘Double Knot’ hints at what eventually arrived in their breakout 2020 track, ‘God’s Menu’, including similar ‘du-du-du’ elements before the chorus”, she wrote. The first full-length album that song leads, GO生 (GO LIVE), came eight months after this single.

The Bugs introduction presents the single as the opening of a project for the second half of 2019, and announces the group’s first solo concert, ‘District 9 : Unlock’, on 23 and 24 November. Three unit songs first performed at that concert were released the following year on IN生 (IN LIFE).