Favorite

The record

Favorite is NCT 127’s third full-length album repackaged, released on 25 October 2021. Three new songs join the eleven from Sticker, which had arrived a month earlier, for fourteen tracks in all, and the title track is ‘Favorite (Vampire)’. SM Entertainment’s album introduction on Bugs calls it “an R&B pop dance number whose charm is an addictive signature whistle and a full harmony vocal”, and credits KENZIE with the writing. The other two new songs are ‘Love On The Floor’ and ‘Pilot’.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) carried Yemi’s short piece on the title track in the singles half of ‘Monthly’, its round-up of October 2021 releases. “‘Favorite’, which Kenzie and Darkchild worked on together, is an interesting track that gives off a strong classical air, in pop terms and in K-pop terms alike,” he wrote. He went on to say that the R&B hit singles Darkchild made in the 1990s and 2000s pass through the song, adding that “while it feels strange that NCT 127, who had been crying ‘neo’, have put out a track that turns back, it also reminds you that the path NCT and NCT 127 have taken was closer to a gathering-up that embraces the legacy of SMP than to a simple updating of it”.

NME’s Carmen Chin published her review four days after release. “Repackaged albums often run the risk of upsetting the delicate balance of the original, however ‘Favorite’ manages to pull off the complete opposite by taking the best parts of what ‘Sticker’ had to offer and masterfully constructing something even better,” she wrote.

Among the tracks

Of the title track Chin wrote that “‘Favorite (Vampire)’ is an immensely nuanced piece – hiding within it inconspicuous layers of thumping beats, sizzling synths and dulcet vocals”. On its chorus she wrote that “the title track fully delivers once its chorus hits”, and that “a completely sublime vocal performance from NCT 127 and fusion of the member’s different voices elegantly uncurl to solidify ‘Favorite (Vampire)’’s chorus as one of their best yet”.

The same review stops at both other new songs. “The repackage’s other new track, ‘Love On The Floor’, on the other hand, is the true cream of the crop,” Chin wrote, and of ‘Pilot’: “We’re transported to a utopia with NCT 127 as our navigators, voices warm and clear as they giddily invite listeners to experience a daydream of bliss.”

Numbers

This record’s album introduction records that the third full-length album Sticker reached number three on the Billboard 200 in the United States, entered the top 40 of the Official Albums Chart in the United Kingdom, placed sixteenth in the top 50 of the ARIA albums chart in Australia and topped Oricon’s weekly album chart in Japan. The same text says the third album passed two million copies sold within a week and won ten music-show trophies.