KISS OF LIFE

The record

KISS OF LIFE is the debut mini album of KISS OF LIFE, released on 5 July 2023 with six tracks. The debut title track is ‘쉿 (Shhh)’, and the other four are solos by Natty, Belle, Julie and Haneul. S2 Entertainment’s album introduction on Bugs says the group’s name means the kiss of life given in resuscitation, and announces an act setting out to breathe new life into the music; it says the record carries a message about pursuing freedom and finding the self one truly is. The same text says every member had a hand in writing and composing, with Belle at the centre of that work, and that the album is ordered so the solos show each member first and the group songs then show the four of them together. It also says the solo videos and the group video were made to run as one story.

Reviews

IZM’s Lee Seung-won opened his album review of August 2023 by naming what the record sets out to do. He wrote that the debut mini album “puts image-making for the group and for each member at the top of its list”, and that “it borrows the image of an all-American girl full of defiance to suit the members’ vocal and visual leanings, and makes that case stronger by leading with Black music and pop of a strongly American colour”. He opened his closing paragraph with “rather than strikingly fresh or polished, this is a solid, weighty arrival”, and wrote that the record “performs the function of a debut album close to perfectly, on its high finish and its clear self-introduction, and levels the ground ahead of the group”.

The same critic put the record on IZM’s Korean albums of the year four months later. There he wrote that it “wins on the work’s own force — its firm finish, its bold construction, its clear sense of genre — which is what makes it especially worth noting”, and called it “a symbolic record that proves work of this standard can be made without vast capital, and declares K-pop’s finish to be general”.

Erin, writing for Idology (아이돌로지), chose the record for the site’s 15 albums of 2023 in January 2024. She wrote that it is “a work faithful to the role of a debut album, which is to introduce the group KISS OF LIFE and its members”, and that ordering the two group songs and the four member solos the way it does “lets a listener take in each member’s strengths, and the character of KISS OF LIFE as a group, in one pass”.

Among the tracks

Lee read the placing of the solos as the device that gives the record its reach. He wrote that “the method of concentrating on conveying what each of them can do is interesting too — ‘Kitty cat’, which shows off a rap performance over a spare beat, or ‘Countdown’, which puts singing and production side by side”.

Natty’s solo ‘Sugarcoat’ was picked out on its own in the English-language press. NME’s Carmen Chin placed it 18th in ‘The 25 best K-pop songs of 2023’ in December that year, writing that “there have been many attempts by K-pop acts to recapture the magic of ’90s R&B, but Natty’s ‘Sugarcoat’, which served as a precursor to KISS OF LIFE’s banger debut, hit the nail right on the head”. She wrote that the song’s groove “hinges almost entirely on Natty’s smooth but powerful vocal delivery”, and that it also shows “KISS OF LIFE’s general musicality as a four-piece that’s unafraid to steep themselves into nostalgic genres and reinvent them for new and old audiences alike”.

After it

The second mini album Born to be XX followed four months later, and the first single album Midas Touch in April the next year. The group’s releases and what came after them are set out on the KISS OF LIFE page.