LILAC

The record

LILAC is IU’s fifth full-length album, released on 25 March 2021 with ten tracks. The album introduction names the opening track ‘Lilac’ as the title track. It is her first full-length album since Palette in 2017.

The introduction on Bugs says the tracks look back over the time behind her from several angles, and that IU produced the record, wrote the lyrics to every track and took part in the composing. The fifth track, ‘Celebrity’, had come out two months earlier, on 27 January 2021, as a pre-release single. The video for ‘Lilac’ was uploaded to the 1theK (원더케이) channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM’s Hwang Seon-eop reviewed the record in April 2021 and put the change in working method first. He wrote that “the point is that she broke with a way of working built around in-house talent and brought in a large number of outside staff, adding range”, and that “the graft of a trendy sound built on many-handed collaboration, the kind idol groups commonly use, is the biggest change of all”. On the fit between message and music, the same piece said that “the breathing between the image she means to carry and the music that supports it meets with surprising precision”.

Idology (아이돌로지) took up the album in its Monthly albums column for March 2021, published on 25 April. Erin wrote that “the album’s first part, which begins with ‘Lilac’, is filled with spring”, and that “spring is a parting from the past and at the same time a season buoyed by a new beginning”. Of the record’s later stretch the same piece said that “in ‘Troll’ and ‘Empty Cup’, which draw a couple’s scene as ordinary, weary and real, IU’s singing sits at the centre of a consistent arrangement”.

NME’s Sofiana Ramli gave the record four stars out of five on 30 March 2021 and wrote that “every track on ‘LILAC’ is bolder and louder than what she’s put out before – the K-pop superstar swaps her subdued brand of sun-kissed pop for dancefloor hits”. On the size of the credit list she wrote: “Yet, despite the sheer number of contributors on the record, IU ensures that there’s still a hint of herself on each song.” She added that “the guitar-driven R&B cut ‘Empty Cup’ is reminiscent of her debut mini-album ‘Lost & Found’, but more mature, while the syrupy ‘Ah Puh’ is a refreshingly adult take on her earlier bubblegum pop jingles”.

Among the tracks

‘Lilac’ is the opening track and the title track. Erin wrote that it lays the syllables used in ‘Good Day’ beside a lyric about how the sky and the wind could be so perfect, and that the combination “recalls the years that made IU a popular singer and at the same time works as a farewell to them”. NME ranked the song first in “The 25 best K-pop songs of 2021”, published on 20 December 2021, calling it “a heartfelt love letter to the singer’s roaring 20s before she enters a new decade”.

Of the second and third tracks Hwang wrote that “‘Flu’, where a minimal beat — almost too spare — and a vocal that uses its breathing well pull against each other oddly, and ‘Coin’, a groovy disco number in a band arrangement that brings Dua Lipa’s ‘Don’t Start Now’ to mind, are tracks where that determination is carefully realised”.

The fifth track, ‘Celebrity’, came out first as a single and drew three reviews of its own. IZM’s Kim Do-heon wrote in January 2021 that the song shows “an artist at the very top yielding the glittering title of celebrity to the minorities in the dark, and singing encouragement and company”, and that “the soft EDM by the composers Ryan S. Jhun and Chloe Latimer is not the newest grammar either, but it resolves into a good move”. Idology’s Randy wrote in the Monthly singles column for January 2021 that “listening to a lyric that rhymes tightly on the same vowel line after line, you feel how sensitive the choice of each word is, and the difficult, urgent intention of someone trying to offer comfort”. NME’s Ramli gave the song four stars and wrote that “on ‘Celebrity’, IU encourages fans to embrace their flaws”.

Erin noted that the song changes position inside the album: placing ‘Celebrity’ after ‘Hi Spring Bye’, she wrote, turns “a song that was addressed to listeners when it was released early into a story the album’s protagonist tells about herself”.

Hwang called the eighth track, ‘My Sea’, the point “with the greatest pull”, writing that its drama “stands for the peak of that narrative”. Erin wrote that the song “lets go of a past that could not love itself and reaches a whole reconciliation with the self”. Idology’s Mano picked it for the writers’ personal lists published on 31 January 2022, calling it “a song where you feel the magic-like staying power of IU the lyricist, which makes a song that could easily have been obvious into something special”.

Numbers

NME placed ‘Lilac’ first in “The 25 best K-pop songs of 2021” on 20 December 2021. The same outlet gave the album itself four stars out of five.

Idology chose the record for its ten albums of 2021, published on 31 December 2021. That page says the ten were “sorted by release date” and assigns no ranking, and the entry printed there is an excerpt of Erin’s review above.

Afterwards

The single strawberry moon followed on 19 October that year, and the mini album Pieces, which gathers songs she had kept aside, came on 29 December.