NCT 2018 EMPATHY

The record

NCT 2018 EMPATHY is NCT’s first group album, released on 14 March 2018 with 14 tracks. It gathers the three songs whose videos came out ahead of it — ‘BOSS’, ‘Baby Don’t Stop’ and ‘GO’ — with NCT 127’s ‘TOUCH’ and ‘Black on Black’, sung by all eighteen members.

The album introduction on Bugs, written by SM Entertainment, says eighteen members took part and that the record holds songs by NCT 127, the Seoul-based team; by NCT U, the rotating unit whose line-up changes from song to song; and by NCT DREAM, made up of the teenage members. The same text names LDN Noise, The Stereotypes, MZMC, Yoo Young-jin, Hyuk Shin, DEEZ and Ryan Jhun among those who worked on it, and says the members Taeyong and Mark are credited as lyricists on several songs. It adds that the three music videos released ahead of the album reached number one on Apple Music’s overall music video chart in 30 territories and on the iTunes music video chart in 10.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record as three writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its column on the records of mid-March 2018. Mano called it “an album like a box of chocolates, to put it in one phrase”, and wrote that it holds enough — the milk chocolate that is the royal road, the bitter and heavy dark, the white that all but melts on the tongue — to satisfy a range of tastes. After noting the mix of new songs, songs already released as singles and songs previously performed only on stage, he added: “What deserves a high mark is that through the many combinations and the range of genres you can feel something like a vision, a certain stubbornness, in the group NCT.”

Third, in the same column, read the change in the album as a change in how each team is used: NCT DREAM took ‘GO’, close to traditional SMP, while NCT 127 turned to the gentler ‘TOUCH’, so that both showed colours they had kept back until then. He wrote: “Given how many music videos came out in so short a time, and how even the quality of each song is, the preparation, the planning and the investment draw admiration.”

Simdyang called the record “a compilation album that gathers up NCT’s world and its direction”, and wrote: “Closest to hip-hop among SM’s groups, and with units that graft one talent onto another, NCT looks to have many colours still to show.” He closed his note: “Having tidied up the steps taken so far, it makes you look forward to what comes next.”

Among the tracks

‘Baby Don’t Stop’ is the song from this album that two outlets placed on their year-end lists. Idology put it tenth in its songs of 2018, published on 27 February 2019, where Skwib wrote that “the two contrasting characters, compared to water and fire, each come alive while holding a close hold on one another, and the pleasure of it is that the performers have become the performance itself.” Billboard placed the same song 19th in its 20 best K-pop songs of 2018, published on 17 December 2018, where Tamar Herman wrote: “After its opening moments, with a thumping bass line and squelching synths, ‘Baby Don’t Stop’ quickly turns into a sultry pop duet that’s a bit gritty and a bit groovy.”

‘일곱 번째 감각 (第七感 ; The 7th Sense)’ came out first as NCT U’s debut single in April 2016, and IZM’s Hwang Seon-eop wrote about it then. He described a groove unfolding around the bass line over a beat that recalls trap and PBR&B, and added: “This aim at a line outside the mainstream reads as SM’s declaration of intent to run this for the long term.” ‘WITHOUT YOU’, released alongside it a day apart, is also on this album, in Korean and Chinese versions.

Afterwards

NCT’s next group album was NCT RESONANCE Pt. 1 in October 2020. Its own album introduction says the title carries a move from this record’s ‘EMPATHY’ to a ‘RESONANCE’ — a resonating together through music.