Never Gonna Dance Again : Prologue

The song

Never Gonna Dance Again : Prologue is the single Taemin released on 4 August 2020. It carries one song, ‘2 KIDS’.

The album introduction by SM ENTERTAINMENT, carried on Bugs, calls it the prologue single that opens the third full-length album Never Gonna Dance Again, and says the album follows it in two parts, Act 1 and Act 2. The music video went up on the SMTOWN channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM’s Lee Hong-hyeon, in a single review in its August 2020 issue, described the arrangement: “Around a muted guitar, pad instruments and electric guitar fill the whole space as if crossing it, the piano in the chorus is as clear as the sound of a water drop, and Taemin’s vocal is stacked faint and thick, completing a resonance that is spare and elegant at once.” The same piece wrote of the lyric that “the song, facing a past relationship stained with regret, has Taemin taking part in the writing himself, and leaves the impression of the most autobiographical among his songs”, and added that “it makes you take out one of the precious memories anyone will be keeping”. He closed by calling it “a song with a long life in it, good to take out and hear again and again”.

Sophia Simon-Bashall of The Line of Best Fit took up the song as the album’s door in her review of Act 1, published on 8 September 2020: “In a year when big, vibrant pop songs have dominated kpop, Taemin introduced the album with the more subtle track, ‘2 KIDS’, an electronic pop song filled with nostalgia for what was and what could have been in a past relationship.” She added: “It is emotionally vulnerable from start to finish, both in Taemin’s contemplative lyrics and his sentimental vocals, but still a catchy song that leaves you wanting more the second it ends.”

IZM’s Kim Do-heon also took the pre-release single as the album’s starting point in his September 2020 review of Act 1, writing that “the sorrowful mood of the pre-release single ‘2 KIDS’ closed on the severance and forgetting of ‘you and I, who must be forgotten while enduring time’”.

What happened

‘2 KIDS’ was carried again as the ninth track of Never Gonna Dance Again : Act 1, released a month later on 7 September 2020. IZM’s Kim Do-heon marked the song as recommended in that review’s tracklist.

Afterwards

The third full-length album closed with Act 2 on 9 November 2020.