Perfect Velvet

The record

Perfect Velvet is Red Velvet’s second full-length album, released on 17 November 2017 with nine tracks. The title track is ‘피카부 (Peek-A-Boo)’. It puts the velvet side back on an album cover four months after the summer mini album The Red Summer.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the title track as up-tempo pop dance built on the group’s signature pluck synth sound and a groove-led rhythm, with a hook on the word that means peek-a-boo, and names The Stereotypes, Kenzie, Hitchhiker and DEEZ among those who worked on the record. By the same text ‘Kingdom Come’ is an R&B track whose acoustic drum loop and full chorus make a dreamlike atmosphere, and ‘I Just’ is future-bass-led electronic pop made with Hitchhiker.

Reviews

Jung Yu-na of IZM read the album as setting the velvet identity back in place. She wrote that “the R&B tracks one might expect, like ‘Kingdom come’ and ‘Perfect 10’, have substantial melodies too”, and that “Red Velvet are one of the teams that realise a song’s temperature and mood well”. After pointing to the way the album brings in the character of Jinbo and DEEZ as a fresh combination, she closed: “The velvet identity has come out again, and the scales that had tipped to one side have narrowed.”

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record as five writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its column on the records of the second half of November 2017. Randy called it “an album beautifully shaped, concentrating the excellence of SM’s A&R”. Hamchwa wrote that it is “the most striking album of the second half of the year, sitting at some peak of what the group Red Velvet has been able to achieve so far”, and chose every track on it as his recommendation. Oyo wrote that “what follows is simply a run of tracks at the front line of sophistication” and that “it is beyond doubt the most striking album released in the second half of 2017”, while Simdyang wrote that “with this album Red Velvet laid a brighter and stronger table, and duly persuaded a great many people”.

weiv put the record on its albums of the year list on 28 December 2017. Jung Gu-won wrote there that “on a second full-length carrying the ambitious word ‘Perfect’, Red Velvet detonate that identity at the scale of the album. It is like Red Velvet, it is experimental, and it is finished.” He added that “the placement of melody and beat is ever-changing and yet harmonious, and the texture of the sound stirs the highest pleasure pop music can offer”, and that the solo and choral parts, organically placed, prove a voice can settle in as one instrument among others. He closed by calling it “a work holding the newest sounds and the deepest history at once, and one that seems possible for nobody but Red Velvet”.

Billboard placed the album 10th in its 20 best K-pop albums of 2017, published on 14 December 2017. The entry introduces it as a deeper glance at the darker, more mature side of the group and says that “as a full-length work it doesn’t disappoint from start to finish”.

Among the tracks

Of the title track ‘피카부 (Peek-A-Boo)’, IZM’s Jung Yu-na wrote that “the reason ‘피카부’ came across without difficulty is that it rests on the repetition of its chorus and the addictiveness of a chant”. Kim Ho-hyeon of the same outlet chose its video in a piece on 9 August 2023 in which the writers picked their favourite music videos, writing that “it is an eerie piece of direction hard to find within the bounds of idol pop” and that it joins the dark narrative of Anglophone horror films to the imagery of the velvet theme. Tássia Assis of NME placed the song fourth in the 127-song retrospective the outlet published on 1 August 2024, writing that it “plays out like a hide-and-seek game, coming and going with tropical synths, xylophone bleeps and other tiny oddities for an inexorably fun ride”.

‘Kingdom Come’ is the song three outlets put forward together. Idology’s Mimyo wrote that it brings an old-school beat, a classic bridge and the grammar of present-day alternative R&B to bear so that no further question is needed. Billboard pointed to “the euphoric harmonizing of the slow-burns that are ‘Kingdom Come’ and ‘Perfect 10’”. Assis placed it second in her retrospective and read it as the track showing that the velvet side is about devotion and depth.

Mimyo wrote of ‘Perfect 10’ that its “deep aftertaste, languid and elegant and sexy, is one to be sure not to miss”, and of ‘I Just’ that it “offers an alternative to a girl-group market grown dull, drawing the girl as a protagonist setting out on an adventure”. Assis placed ‘Perfect 10’ 10th, ‘I Just’ 13th and ‘봐 (Look)’ 18th in her retrospective, calling ‘봐’ “this ’80s-inspired delight” and “a head-turner, with its lush combination of synths and vocal loops, delivered with utmost sophistication”. Billboard picked out ‘두 번째 데이트 (My Second Date)’ and ‘I Just’ as the tracks giving the group room to experiment, and Jung Yu-na wrote that “the kitsch melodies of ‘두 번째 데이트’ and ‘Attaboy’ bring the debut record to mind after a long while”.

Afterwards

Two months later the repackage The Perfect Red Velvet added three new songs to this album.