NCT RESONANCE Pt. 1

The record

NCT RESONANCE Pt. 1 is the first half of NCT’s second full-length album, released on 12 October 2020 with 13 tracks. The title track is ‘Make A Wish (Birthday Song)’. It is the group’s first album under the full name since NCT 2018 EMPATHY, two and a half years earlier.

The album introduction on Bugs, written by SM Entertainment, says 23 members took part, and that alongside the rotating unit NCT U the record carries songs by NCT 127, NCT DREAM and WayV. The same text says the title moves from 2018’s ‘EMPATHY’ to a ‘RESONANCE’ — a resonating together through music — and names KENZIE, Moonshine, Stereotypes, Harvey Mason Jr., Mike Daley and minGtion among those who worked on it, with the member Jaehyun credited as a lyricist on ‘Dancing In The Rain’.

Reviews

Kim Do-heon of IZM took the record in October 2020 and wrote that it is “a well-made K-pop album, with the wheat sorted from the chaff”. The album, he wrote, “folds together the rap and hip-hop line held to since ‘The 7th Sense’, the headlong drive of ‘Fire Truck’ and ‘Kick It’, the steady handling of ‘Boss’ and the narrative of ‘Cherry Bomb’”, and he noted that it takes in everything from the cold character of an avant-garde electronic sample to vintage rock, jazz, groove-led dance and soft R&B.

The same outlet placed the record on its 2020 albums of the year in December 2020. Writing that entry, Lee Hong-hyun said the album “gathers the colours and the sides each of the constituent groups already had and re-cuts them into music that has grown, holding rap tracks that deepen the team’s own colour, dance built on wide-swinging electronics, lyrical and quiet slow songs and a mixing of languages that plays on the multinational line-up, all at a formidable level of finish”. He called it “far and away the most brilliant idol album of the year”, and added: “There is no room to be bored, because the choice of grammar is free, and that shows they have been quietly building a musical history of their own.”

Among the tracks

Of the title track, Kim Do-heon wrote that “the album leaves its mark from ‘Make a wish (Birthday song)’, which throws it open with a whistle”, and that “from the steady back-and-forth of the rap and vocal parts to the synth riff added in the chorus and the BPM dropped in the back half, the basic frame is constantly dissolved and yet the make of it stays steady.” Idology (아이돌로지) placed the song’s staging on its 2020 performance picks, published on 28 February 2021, where Skwib wrote: “‘Make A Wish’ is the song that made the use of the NCT U format — changing the line-up to suit the song, out of a wide member pool — register more clearly than ever.” He closed the entry: “The reason we cannot help but keep watching NCT’s future is held in this performance.”

Among the other tracks Kim singled out ‘Misfit’ as one that carries weight on the album: “Packed tight without a gap, ‘Misfit’ brings home that the new style NCT is aiming at is a model form SM has kept for a very long time, however diluted its politics may be.” He wrote that “‘Volcano’, an exemplary follow-up to ‘Boss’, and ‘Déjà Vu’, which attempts a change for the youthful NCT DREAM, also push a cool-toned heat out around fresh loops”, and called ‘Light Bulb’ — “a track that crosses rap and ballad over a beat carried in a lyrical mood” — and ‘Dancing In The Rain’, which “opens on a jazz guitar touch and builds a lo-fi mood cleanly”, “fine joins between the harder tracks”.

By the album introduction, three songs take the single subject of dance and put it through each team’s own style: NCT 127’s ‘Music, Dance’, NCT DREAM’s ‘무대로 (Déjà Vu; 舞代路)’ and ‘Nectar’, sung in Chinese by WayV. ‘From Home’, whose lyric mixes Korean, Chinese and Japanese, is carried with a Korean version beside it.

Numbers

The sequel’s album introduction says this record passed a million copies within a week of release, and gives its chart placings: number six on the Billboard 200 in the United States, number one on the United World Chart, number two on Japan’s Oricon weekly album chart and number one on its overseas album chart, number one on China’s QQ Music digital album sales chart and number one on the Korean album chart.

Afterwards

Six weeks later, on 23 November 2020, NCT RESONANCE Pt. 2 added eight songs to these thirteen.