LOVE DIVE

The record

LOVE DIVE is IVE’s second single album, released on 5 April 2022, four months after the debut single ELEVEN. It carries two tracks, ‘LOVE DIVE’ and ‘ROYAL’. Starship Entertainment’s album introduction on Bugs describes ‘LOVE DIVE’ as dark modern pop built on percussion, and the same text credits the rap writing on ‘ROYAL’ to Gaeul and Rei.

Reviews

IZM’s Jung Su-min wrote of the single that “love, high teen, self-possession — the keywords gathered here are the obvious ones, but the way they are worked out is not”. Jung wrote that “a dark mood and a tension that recall Lady Gaga’s ‘Monster’ and ‘Bad romance’ circle the whole song, and the grand percussion and the reverb-soaked harmony give a sense of descent that matches the line ‘hold your breath, love dive’”. Picking out the lyrics as the notable part, Jung wrote that “instead of casting the passive spell of asking you to fall for me, IVE fall for themselves, following the myth in which Narcissus saw his own face and leapt into the lake”, and called the song “a successful re-reading of Cupid, one that turns the arrow of love for another back on the self”.

Cho Eun-jae, writing for the K-pop criticism webzine Idology in the April 2022 issue of Monthly, its short-notice column on new releases, wrote that “a humming like a siren’s song lies under the whole track and sets a dreamlike mood, while the vocal too draws a wide contrast between heavily reverbed passages and light ones, giving the impression of moving busily between under the water and above it”. Cho wrote that “this dramatic staging goes off when the sound drops at the moment the title ‘LOVE DIVE’ is called out and the plunge into the water finally happens”, and read the two singles together: “The word ‘dare’ appears in both ‘ELEVEN’ and ‘LOVE DIVE’, and where it meant ‘presumptuously, in word or act’ in ‘ELEVEN’, in ‘LOVE DIVE’ it turns into ‘in the face of fear’, working as a keyword that sculpts IVE’s character in the round.”

NME’s Tássia Assis ran a track review two days after release. She wrote that the title track is “a siren song that serpentines through dark, atmospheric bass and lilting vocals, enticing the listener until the end”, and that “although a more subdued affair than ‘Eleven’, it also feels more intentional, highlighting each member’s unique tones and charms while retaining the allure that worked so well for their debut”.

Among the tracks

‘ROYAL’ is the track NME took up on its own. Assis wrote that it has “enough flair to be a title track”, and that “the moody electro beats of ‘Royal’ allow for vocalists Liz and An Yu-jin to soar, and rappers Rei and Gaeul to duet dynamically in their first self-written raps”. The album introduction credits the same two with the rap writing.

Numbers

Idology placed ‘LOVE DIVE’ among its 20 songs of the year in its 2022 round-up, running an excerpt of Cho’s Monthly notice in that slot. The sentence Cho closed it with is this: “The performance, which shows a narcissist’s haughty attitude head-on, also makes fine synergy with the song and lets you feel the most primal, classical pleasure there is in watching an idol.”

What came after

The music video went up on the label’s official STARSHIP channel the same day. Four months later came the third single album After LIKE, and the first full-length album I’ve IVE followed in April the next year.