Face the Sun

The record

Face the Sun is SEVENTEEN’s fourth full-length album, released on 27 May 2022 with nine tracks. The title track is ‘HOT’. The group’s first English-language single, ‘Darl+ing’, came out in April and opens the record.

The album introduction on Bugs says the record carries the ambition to become a sun — the one thing whose influence over the world is beyond replacing — and that the title holds the will to meet whatever comes head on, however painful the journey. The same text describes the trailer films released member by member beforehand, ‘13 Inner Shadows’, as each member speaking about his own fear, calls the title track ‘HOT’ a hip-hop track laid over western guitar, and notes that all nine tracks are group songs.

Reviews

Clash reviewed the album on the day of release, writing that “made up of thirteen members and three sub-units, K-pop group Seventeen have returned with their fourth full length album, ‘Face the Sun’, and have once again proven their immense collaborative artistry”. The piece closes: “‘Face the Sun’ is a testament of Seventeen’s influence as a key group within K-pop.”

NME’s Abby Webster reviewed it four days later. Her last paragraph reads: “‘Hot’ blazes forward into new territory with its brazen sensuality – but, proven by ‘Face the Sun’’s familiar yet sublimely inventive B-sides, SEVENTEEN needn’t start from scratch.”

IZM chose the record as its Monthly Pick for June 2022. The single line Jeong Su-min wrote under it: “The pioneering spirit and the cowboy, and beneath them a hidden longing for the West.”

Among the tracks

NME spends most of its length on the B-sides. Of ‘March’ and ‘DON QUIXOTE’ it says: “They rove the city at dawn ‘like a cowboy’ on the powerful, rock-tinged ‘March’, later taking on the role of the Spanish knight errant in the anthemic ‘Don Quixote’, riding off into the sunset and brushing aside naysayers.” On ‘Shadow’: “Warm and wistful in equal measure, ‘Shadow’ sees them embracing their dark side with tender lyricality.” It treats ‘Domino’ as an elastic, funky track that glides into an anti-drop chorus, one of co-composer Woozi’s trademarks.

Both outlets pick out the closing ‘Ash’. NME calls it a trap track with heavy vocal processing in the manner of the hip-hop unit’s earlier cuts, and writes that “here, however, all thirteen members feature on the track, allowing even the vocalists of the group to flex their rap skills”. Clash describes Vernon’s part in producing and writing it, and says the song speaks of rising up, rebelling against the norm and defying expectations over a heavy trap beat. The same review says the record “showcases the experimental side of the group that has always stood out, unafraid to venture into unknown territory”.

Clash also notes how the units cross over. On ‘DON QUIXOTE’ the rappers S.Coups and Mingyu take a more melodic approach, and on ‘Shadow’ the performer Dino contributes rap verses: “Despite the group’s categorisation of performers, vocalists and rappers, the tracks on Face the Sun reject each member’s individual position and instead effectively expose the group’s combined talents.”

Numbers

Newspim reported first-week sales of 2,067,769 copies, and that SEVENTEEN and BTS are the only acts to have sold over a million copies on the day of release and reached a double-million first week. By the same report the album entered the Billboard 200 at number seven, SEVENTEEN’s first top ten on that chart and six places above the 13 they had reached with Attacca. By Billboard’s own chart history that placing is on the chart dated 18 June 2022.