Palette

The record

Palette is the fourth full-length album by IU, released on 21 April 2017 with ten tracks. The title track is the second of them, ‘Palette’, featuring G-DRAGON. Two pre-releases came ahead of it and both are on the record: Through the Night on 24 March and Can’t Love You Anymore on 7 April.

The album introduction states that the record gathers several kinds of music and several stories rather than holding to one genre, and that IU produced it herself. The music video for the title track was uploaded to the 1theK (원더케이) channel on the day of release.

Reviews

IZM reviewed the record in April 2017. Hwang Seon-eop opened by writing that “as the lyric has it — ‘these days I just like things easy’ — the fourth studio record is plainer than the ones before it”, and that “it borrows elements of jazz, R&B and synth-pop, but there is no stretch that puts a genre’s markers on show”. He placed the singer’s position ahead of the sound: “What stands before any musical achievement is the will of a speaker who wants her own story first.” On the singing he wrote that “the vocal’s changeability fills the gaps in the arrangement effectively; she moves freely between falsetto and full voice, sometimes out at the front of a song and sometimes hidden in the accompaniment”. Of the record’s language the same piece says that “the language is still in a private domain, yet at the same time it doubles as a public good”.

Idology (아이돌로지) took up the record in its new-release column ‘1st Listen’ on 20 May 2017. Mimyo wrote that “with the other tracks carrying varied snapshots of the present against that background, the album plainly satisfies the very definition of what an ‘album’ is”, and added that “the mischievous twists hidden in every corner, waiting on a knife-edge for the listener to notice them, are a beguiling bonus, and they bring the album closer to a ‘polished truth’ than to ‘sincerity’”.

Billboard placed the record first in “20 Best K-pop Albums of 2017”, published on 14 December 2017. The entry, signed with initials only, says: “We dive deeper into her brain on the lead single ‘Palette,’ to learn about the preferences of the woman IU has grown into today, while songs like ‘Jam Jam’ and ‘Ending Scene’ explain what life and love are like when you’re one of the most talked-about stars in a music scene.” It closes: “An album as impressive and sonically diverse as Palette proves why injecting an artist’s personal experiences into their music can lead to their greatest work yet.”

Among the tracks

Of the opening track, ‘Dlwlrma’, Hwang Seon-eop wrote that “‘Dlwlrma’, a dainty pop-jazz number that says ‘let us love the me of right now’, succeeds in catching the eye early”.

The title track, ‘Palette’, is the second track and carries a rap from G-DRAGON. Billboard placed it sixth in “20 Best K-pop Songs of 2017” on 14 December 2017, writing that “the track sounds like something Dev Hynes could’ve produced given the softly sung R&B, dreamy synth-pop production and neon decor of her comeback performance”. The Singles Jukebox took up the same song on 25 May 2017, each writer signing a short piece with a mark out of ten; Alfred Soto gave it seven, calling it “a lap pool disturbed by faint ripple of disquiet”.

The fifth track, ‘Jam Jam’, was written by Sunwoo Junga, and the Jukebox took it up separately on 12 June 2017. Ramzi Awn gave it nine: “An instant hook with harmony for days, ‘Jam Jam’ does more than follow through on its promise. The bass line escorts IU’s vocals to a pristine build-up accented by proper synths and bleeps.” Ian Mathers gave it nine as well: “I love the way the song suddenly lays back on that pre-chorus bit with the layered voices, like the track’s about to pass out; I love the sudden reimposition of the bassline, and I love the way the disco bits seem extra-frothy because of the way they wash into and out of ‘Jam Jam.’” Alfred Soto gave it seven: “I can listen to the bass line and the breathy ‘More More More’ vocals all afternoon.”

The eighth track, ‘Through the Night’, and the fourth, ‘Can’t Love You Anymore’, had both been released as singles first. The guitarist Lee Byung-woo plays on the ninth, ‘Love Alone’, which Hwang Seon-eop called “‘Love Alone’, which pours out a shining tragic beauty through the meeting with the guitarist Lee Byung-woo”.

Numbers

Billboard placed Palette first in “20 Best K-pop Albums of 2017” on 14 December 2017 and, the same day, placed ‘Palette’ sixth in “20 Best K-pop Songs of 2017”. On 25 November 2019 ‘Palette’ placed thirty-fourth in “The 100 Greatest K-Pop Songs of the 2010s”. Idology placed the record third in “결산 2017 : ② 최고의 음반” on 30 January 2018 and seventh in “결산 2017 : ⑤ 기억될 음반” on 2 April that year.

Afterwards

The second remake record, A Flower Bookmark, Pt. 2, followed five months later, on 22 September 2017.