poppop

The record

poppop is NCT WISH’s second mini album, released on 14 April 2025 with six tracks. The title track shares the record’s name.

The album introduction on Bugs, written by SM Entertainment, says the record speaks about the clumsy feelings that come with love felt for the first time.

Reviews

Jeong Gi-yeop of IZM, in a review dated 18 April 2025, first set down how the group was made: the label’s first audition programme of its own chose the members, and BoA was brought in as executive producer. He described the concept running through the record as “an innocent and lovable concept” and wrote that “having found that gap in the market astonishingly well, they preach a bright energy and have become a way this generation expresses itself”. The record, he added, “holds a consistent coherence, with the aesthetic represented by star-shaped stickers and diaries bound to the concept across the whole album”, and closed the passage: “the virtue is simple. To do well the thing that suits you.”

Real Sound, the Japanese music site, chose the album as one of the month’s five records in the 149th instalment of its K-pop new-release column ‘lit!’ on 11 May 2025. The writer said the group has kept a fresh concept consistent since its debut and held its listeners with a branding of its own, and described the title track as a thoroughly bright and pop-facing song of young love, in which a narrator carrying a faint crush comes upon a certain candy shop. The choreography built on the hand movement that follows the chorus is charming too, the piece said, and the song is an up-tempo one whose freshness suits the hot season ahead.

Among the tracks

What Jeong wrote about at greatest length was not the title track but the ones behind it. “‘Still 3PM’ has BoA, who led the record, and the singer-songwriter SHAUN, who has worked on several of these songs, taking part, and expresses the Little Prince imagery well, while ‘Melt inside my pocket’ stamps every sonic element on the ear in a strong colour,” he wrote, then set the latter beside ‘3 Minutes’ from Steady as “a standout achievement optimised for WISH’s own character”. Both songs, he added, have lyrics that “line up with the image the group presents and help the listener into it”.

For ‘1000’ he reached into the label’s own discography: “like f(x)’s ‘Goodbye summer’ and EXO’s ‘Girl x friend’, ‘1000’ describes in concrete terms the act of folding a thousand paper cranes to confess, and carries on the line of what people call the memory-fabricating song.” Of ‘Design’ he wrote that it “also shows a quiet presence, its chorus drawn in the thick lines that recall Yoo Young-jin, a composer long at the label”.

Around it

Four and a half months later, on 1 September 2025, the third mini album COLOR followed.