Love poem

The record

Love poem is IU’s fifth mini album, released on 18 November 2019 with six tracks. The album introduction says the record’s namesake song ‘Love Poem’ had been put out ahead of it on 1 November. It is her first album since Palette in 2017.

The introduction on Bugs says IU wrote the lyrics to every track and composed two of them, and that her own notes on each song are printed alongside them. The video was made for the third track, ‘Blueming’, and was uploaded to the 1theK (원더케이) channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM’s Hwang Seon-eop reviewed the record in December 2019 and opened by calling it, to put the conclusion first, an album that can be listened to over a long span and for a long time. He wrote that “the stories held in each track give you more to think about the more you listen, expand along several lines, and lend the album itself a long life”. On how the record is built, the same piece said that “dressing each story in exactly the music that fits it, and so showing its subject in the round, is this work’s greatest virtue”.

Idology (아이돌로지) placed the album seventh in its albums of 2019, published on 24 February 2020. Randy called it “six love poems published by the poet IU, deepened further in her 11th year since debut”, and wrote that “the lyrics set out from different situations and stories but all converge on love in the end, without a wasted word”.

Billboard placed it 18th in “The 25 Best K-pop Albums of 2019: Critics’ Picks” on 31 December 2019. The entry, signed with initials only, says that “over the six tracks of Love Poem, IU shows us what an excellent purveyor of emotions she is”, and goes on: “On ‘Blueming’, there is the foot-tapping, finger-wringing hide and seek of courting; on ‘Love Poem’, the shattering resignation of accepting that you’ve lost this love, but also the steely determination of holding on until your fingers bleed.”

Among the tracks

‘Blueming’ is the third track. Hwang wrote that “in ‘Blueming’, which startles people with more rock than they expect, there is a nostalgia for 1980s new wave hiding”. Billboard’s Tamar Herman wrote of the same song that “as IU sings calmly in an upbeat manner about the blue-ming emotions of sending small flower-like texts to the object of her affection, she expresses the everyday anxieties of modern day romance in her own distinct way”.

Of the fourth track, ‘Above the Time’, Hwang wrote that the song — awaited as the sequel to ‘YOU&I’ eight years on — “realises a complete fantasy, laying an Irish, faraway feeling over a musical-theatre structure”. Idology’s Jo Eun-jae picked it for the outlet’s songs of 2019, writing that “the IU we love is always right here”.

Hwang named the second track, ‘The Visitor’, the song on the record where “the new attempts are most densely gathered”, and wrote that its blues guitar, approached more as a genre than before, “bends the line she has held until now a little, and gives off an enjoyable unexpectedness”.

Numbers

Idology ranked the album seventh among its albums of 2019 and placed ‘Above the Time’ joint 14th among its songs of the year. The two pieces ran on 24 February and 11 February 2020.

Billboard placed ‘Blueming’ at number 19 in “The 25 Best K-pop Songs of 2019: Critics’ Picks” on 29 December 2019, and the album 18th in the same outlet’s list of the year’s albums.

Afterwards

The single eight, produced by and featuring SUGA of BTS, followed on 6 May 2020, and the fifth full-length album LILAC came on 25 March 2021.