NOEASY

The record

NOEASY is the second full-length album Stray Kids released on 23 August 2021. It carries fourteen tracks and the title track is ‘Thunderous’. It came eleven months after the repackage IN生 (IN LIFE), and the holiday single Christmas EveL follows it by three months.

The album introduction on Bugs says this is the first record the group released after winning Mnet’s Kingdom: Legendary War. Of the title track it says the name folds two meanings into one word — the nagger who makes noise and the sorikkun who sings — and carries the message of not being cowed by what other people say. On the sound, the same text says the sounds of traditional Korean music are added to a grand melody, and that the calls and interjections take the record’s high spirits to their peak. It also sets out the running order: from the intro ‘Cheese’ through three unit songs and ‘Wolfgang’, the group’s final competition piece from Kingdom, to ‘Mixtape : OH’, the digital single released separately on 26 June that year and number one on Billboard’s World Digital Song Sales chart dated 10 July. Every member is credited on the record, with 3RACHA at the head of it.

Reviews

Ruby C reviewed the album for NME four days after release. Of the title track she wrote: “Setting the scene for their first comeback in nearly a year is ‘Thunderous’, a title track that’s just as fierce as its name makes it out to be.” The song, she added, “retains its strength and self-assuredness from start to the end, anchored by a cacophonous combination of thundering, brassy horns and controlled EDM beats.” She noted the ways it reaches for traditional Korean culture — the Korean title refers to a traditional singer who tells stories in the musical form known as pansori, and the melody samples percussion from the folk genre samul nori. Her closing sentence: “Filled with depth, creative substance and a whole repertoire of ‘noise’ to boot, ‘NOEASY’ is Stray Kids’ unapologetic reminder that they are not empty vessels.”

Mano and Kwibi took the record side by side in Idology’s (아이돌로지) monthly albums column for August 2021. Mano wrote that “just like the deliberately punning, double-edged title, which read literally means not easy and read another way means noisy, the make-up of the album is unpredictably noisy too.” The audacity of the intro answering back to the reactions aimed at the group, and the shameless wit of joining a Korean onomatopoeia to an English interjection, are both still there, he wrote, and “the attitude that runs the length of the record is at any rate hard to look away from, and there is a side of it that ends up winning you over.” He called it “an album that shows something of the essence of the fourth-generation idol”.

Kwibi wrote that the record “is packed with cheerful provocation”. “The sheer volume of fourteen songs is provocative in itself, but the opening run from ‘Cheese’ into ‘Ssick’ is especially remarkable”, he wrote, and added: “in the faces of songs that snicker away happily, the vocals throwing out extraordinary lines shamelessly and a playful sound to match passing it back and forth, you feel the spirit of a group that has climbed into the rank of the fourth generation’s leading idols.”

Among the tracks

Billboard placed the title track ninth on its 25 best K-pop songs of 2021. “While last year saw Stray Kids’ artistic breakthrough with some of 2020’s best K-pop albums and songs, ‘Thunderous’ brought the formula to a new level”, Jeff Benjamin wrote. “Opening with the mystifyingly fast rap stylings from rappers Changbin and Han that have become a signature style for SKZ, ‘Thunderous’ seamlessly segues to a sleek, trumpeting chorus.” Sharifa Charles of Clash chose the same song, and wrote that “the track seamlessly blends anthemic drums with traditional Korean flutes and car horn samples, creating an innovative yet iconic sound that delivers the message and blends seamlessly with the theme of the track.”

The intro ‘Cheese’ was Taylor Glasby’s pick for Clash. “Stray Kids’ unique humour is as much a part of their creativity as their sense of unwavering self-belief”, she wrote, reading the song as an unbothered answer to the group’s anti-fans whose point is not the clapback but the tongue-in-cheek absurdism it is married to, and the fact that the world of vitriol the song came out of is one it can laugh at and thrive in. What she found most satisfying about it is that it was never released as a single at all.

‘Domino’ was taken up by three writers. Ruby C wrote that it “features head-spinning transitions from heavy bass beats to a high-pitched taepyeongso (a traditional wind instrument) sample, then into a descending xylophone-esque chromatic scale, before it surprises with a genre twist towards the end.” Sharifa Charles wrote that “Stray Kids’ song ‘DOMINO’ accurately reflects their impressive success and trend-setting influence”, and that “the song boldly proclaims their skill and ability in a melodic and catchy way.” Jo Eun-jae of Idology put it in the striking follow-up singles section of the magazine’s 2021 year-end personal lists, writing that “since ‘God’s Menu’, Stray Kids have started to work heavy messages out through wit with their own bright-spirited feel added, rather than putting the message out plainly”, and closed the entry with a line about the pull of the kitchen: “say what you like, flour is a hard thing to give up.”

Ruby C set the back half of the record apart. “‘NOEASY’ isn’t just made up of thunderclaps all the way, though. Just as how storms gradually subside, Stray Kids slow things down with mellower jams in the album’s latter portion”, she wrote, and named ‘The View’ as the song that probably best encapsulates where the group had arrived on its journey.

Numbers

The Korea Herald reported on 7 February 2025, citing the label, that the music video for ‘Thunderous’ had passed 400 million views on YouTube, the group’s second video to do so after ‘God’s Menu’. The same report said NOEASY was the group’s first album to sell over a million copies, and that ‘Thunderous’ reached number one on the iTunes Top Songs chart in 52 regions and took six trophies from television music chart shows in Korea. The song was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2024, the same report said.

The same outlet reported on 15 July 2025 that the music video for the intro track ‘Cheese’ had passed 100 million views, the group’s seventeenth video to reach that mark.