FML

The record

FML is SEVENTEEN’s tenth mini album, released on 24 April 2023 with six tracks. For the first time since their debut the group led with two title tracks, and the music video for one of them, ‘Super’, went up on the day of release.

The album introduction on Bugs explains that the title is the abbreviation of an English slang phrase used to despair of one’s own life when things go badly, and says SEVENTEEN chose to fight through together rather than sink into that thought. The same text calls ‘Super’ a hard alternative jersey-club track, and says the group likened their own growth to the Monkey King, who upgrades himself through every ordeal. The other four songs are the hip-hop unit’s ‘Fire’, the performance unit’s ‘I Don’t Understand But I Luv U’, the vocal unit’s ‘Dust’ and the group song ‘April shower’.

Reviews

The Korea Herald’s Hong Yoo published a review the day after release, writing that “the 13-member group dived deep into the difficulties the youth face in their life journey and decoded them into healthy and positive music that embraces a message of hope and encouragement”.

IZM’s Jeong Su-min reviewed ‘Super’ as a single a week later. He wrote that “it is a single that grabs you with an appealing first impression — the polished sound and the concept the members carry off with ease do that”, and that “as the previous record < Face The Sun > aimed at the American pioneering spirit with its western cowboys, this time it puts an Eastern beauty forward with a concept transplanted from Hong Kong action cinema and an afrobeat that recalls Korean traditional instruments”.

Among the tracks

Both outlets deal with ‘Super’. The Korea Herald wrote that “the drum sounds throughout ‘Super’ that went well with the fast-tempo song were very iconic and unique”, and that “the hook of the song, in which Seventeen chants ‘DARUMDARIMDA’ multiple times, continues to stay in one’s head, proving its addictiveness”. The album introduction says the music video carries a mega-crew performance with more than two hundred dancers.

Of the other title track, the Korea Herald read the pessimism of its name as the opposite of what the song does: it is about feeling lost and lonely in the world with no one to say so to, and the real message, the review says, arrives in the hook — that instead of giving up one should make the effort to recover from a slump. Of the vocal unit’s ‘Dust’ it wrote that “the vocals of the unit harmonize well with the track, which sounds like a song from an animated movie”.

Numbers

Maeil Ilbo reported first-week sales of 4,550,214 copies and called it a new record for the highest first week by any K-pop album. By the same report the record entered the Billboard 200 dated 13 May 2023 at number two, SEVENTEEN’s best placing on that chart to date. Billboard’s own chart history carries the same date and position.