MOVE

The record

MOVE is Taemin’s second full-length album, released on 16 October 2017 with nine tracks led by the title track of the same name. It is his first solo record since Press It, a year and eight months earlier.

The album introduction by SM ENTERTAINMENT, carried on Bugs, says the record carries the sense of a new movement, away from the music and the performance that came before. Red Velvet’s Seulgi takes a featured part on ‘Heart Stop’, and the music video went up on the SMTOWN channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM’s Park Su-jin, reviewing the record in its October 2017 issue, set out that where the previous album spread several genres out, this one concentrates on R&B and electronic sound, and described the result: “From the title track ‘Move’, which holds the ear with a heavy bass and the vocal alone and not one rough sound, to ‘Crazy 4 U’, where an abrupt funky rhythm takes your breath, to ‘미로(Stone heart)’, where a brass section added late over a tropical house base finally puts you on the rhythm, the tracks work the central nervous system with the smallest possible means.” The same piece said he “gathered songs that fit his own colour well”, and closed: “In an age short of full-length albums, with good songs and a sense of dance on top, this is a comeback that plainly stands out.”

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record as two writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its 21 November 2017 column on the records of late October. Mimyo wrote that the album “calmly betrays the list of sources used for a given style and the way they are used, and seems to have picked whatever seemed most necessary from every source within reach”, and that “it therefore leaves even a genre listener with a good deal of strangeness and keeps the tension alive”. He closed: “Work this complex and this taut is usually taken to belong to a genius holding total control, and in that this was reached through a system, it is one of the results that has gone furthest with the K-pop technology of the moment.” Haemchwa wrote in the same column: “The whole record is so out of step with the current shape of the K-pop scene that it feels as if it dropped like a comet. Something like the image of a rock star from another world doing K-pop idol work.” He added that “as a soloist distinct from SHINee the concept is firmly set, and the vocal is handled to match, with attempts varied enough to feel unfamiliar”.

Tamar Herman of Billboard placed the album 17th in the outlet’s 20 best K-pop albums of 2017, published on 14 December 2017. She wrote that “enigmatic in style and non-conformist in its messaging, the SHINee member’s second full-length solo album is a dark, sensual approach to K-pop laden with brooding synths and smooth R&B”, and added: “Individually, each track is a clean-cut pop production defined by dynamic elements, like the funky dichotomy of ‘Crazy 4 You,’ the piping synths of ‘Stone Heart,’ or the soaring vocals on ‘Love,’ but combined Move is an epic show of Taemin’s artistry.”

Among the tracks

The title track ‘MOVE’ is the song Dazed placed eighth in its 20 best K-pop songs of 2017, published on 7 December 2017. The piece wrote that “on ‘MOVE’ the latter is scaled back to tense 80s synthwave that circles without pouncing”, the latter being the dramatic flair the outlet had just named. The same entry set out the relation between song and video: “Its reticence is given clarity through the MV; song and video complete, and exist for, each other as a twin performance in which empty streets, expressionless dancers and beautifully fluid choreography demand attention, but command distance through cold colourations, CCTV and fuzzy VHS frames, and camera angles which film like a secret onlooker.” IZM’s Park Su-jin wrote of the same stage that what comes out is not the familiar precision unison but a turn away from it.

‘Heart Stop’ carries a featured part by Red Velvet’s Seulgi. Idology’s Haemchwa closed his note: “I recommend you listen to ‘Heart Stop’, featuring Red Velvet’s Seulgi, and to ‘Back To You’.” IZM’s Park Su-jin wrote of the two later songs that “the springy melody of ‘Thirsty’ and the clear pull of ‘Back to you’ show the record staking itself on the individual songs rather than on the virtue of an arc”. Billboard picked out ‘Crazy 4 U’, ‘미로 (Stone Heart)’ and ‘Love’ for a funky dichotomy, piping synths and soaring vocals respectively.

What happened

Idology placed the record on two of its 2017 year-end pages: second in its best albums of 2017, published on 30 January 2018, and sixth in its records to remember, published on 2 April 2018. Haemchwa’s note ran with both, and the first carried the line “something like the image of a rock star from another world doing K-pop idol work”.

On the English-language year-end pages, Billboard placed the album 17th and Dazed placed the title track eighth. weiv ran its writers’ individual lists alongside the final ten in its year-end feature of 28 December 2017, and six of those writers put MOVE on their own list.

Afterwards

Two months later, on 10 December 2017, the repackage MOVE-ing added four songs to this album.