Press It

The record

Press It is Taemin’s first full-length album, released on 23 February 2016 with ten tracks led by ‘Press Your Number’. It is his first solo record since the mini album ACE, a year and six months earlier.

The album introduction by SM ENTERTAINMENT, carried on Bugs, says it is the first record on which Taemin took part in writing lyrics. The music video went up on the SMTOWN channel on 22 February 2016, the day before the release.

Reviews

IZM’s Jeong Min-jae, reviewing the record in its March 2016 issue, started from the form — a full-length album filled with ten songs — and wrote that it “holds a wide spectrum from dance pop through R&B to ballads, flexibly and densely, around the two axes of steady vocal handling and an elaborate performance”. The same piece called it striking that songs by writers as distinct as Bruno Mars, Jonghyun and G.Soul had been remade as Taemin’s own pop, and went on: “The organic flow achieved by a fitting spread of dance and ballad and a close-knit structure, and a firmly set character on top of that, make this a fine record beyond doubt.” He closed the review: “Above all, the album’s greatest achievement is that it drew attention to the music itself, through a fine voice, ahead of the video.”

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record as two writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its 7 March 2016 column on the records of late February. Mimyo wrote that “the sound and the writing are trickier and the visuals are unsparingly severe, and the songs themselves are finished so sleekly that they produce an uncanny valley — so much so that it is only when a song like ‘Guess Who’ plays the villain that you feel reassured”, and added: “After hearing the album you almost fall into the delusion that ‘Press Your Number’ was chosen not because it is the most attractive, but so that the listener would not take fright and give up on the record.” Cho Seong-min wrote in the same column that the album “also side-steps the trap of the album with nothing to hear but the title track, one of SM’s chronic problems”, and closed: “I can vouch that this is the best album of at least the first quarter, if not of the whole year.”

weiv’s Lee Seon-yeop took up the record in ‘[Shortlist] 3월 상반기’ on 18 March 2016. He wrote that “in the solo artist Taemin you catch the silhouettes of several artists”, listed Michael Jackson, Bruno Mars, Shinhwa, The Weeknd and his own group-mate Jonghyun, and said the record “is coming close to the canon of pop music across several generations and cultures”. The same piece added: “‘Drip Drop’ and the title track ‘Press Your Number’ do not stray far from the musical style SHINee has recently stood for, but among the album tracks his unconventional attempts — showing a rough and decadent side without hesitation — come as something of a surprise.”

Among the tracks

The title track ‘Press Your Number’ is the song IZM ran as a separate single review in its February 2016 issue, the month of the release. Hwang Seon-eop wrote there that “a minimal accompaniment underlines the outstanding sense of rhythm in the vocal, and the shrewd use of the guitar and chorus that follows supports the melody of the chorus and guarantees a clear arc”. Jeong Min-jae of the same outlet wrote in the album review that “‘Press your number’, which wraps a melancholy melody of the kind particular to Bruno Mars in a sensuous pop sound, is by far the highlight”.

The opening track ‘Drip Drop’ is the song most written about on this record. Idology’s Amil published a piece on it alone on 5 April 2016, writing that “this song observes the natural phenomenon of water falling on water in microscopic detail and makes that process into a piece of music”, and that it is “a work that produces a dramatic rapture in which music and dance, form and content are organically and closely joined so that each exists for the other”. Its performance video was picked by Park Hee-a in Idology’s best music videos of 2016, published on 9 March 2017, where she wrote: “This is a work that shows a performance video is plainly different from a choreography video and from a dance practice video.”

Four tracks were called out by name. Idology’s Cho Seong-min wrote that “besides ‘Drip Drop’, already shown on television, and the title track ‘Press Your Number’, songs like ‘벌써’ and ‘Mystery Lover’ are attractive enough that hearing them is not enough and you want to see them too”. IZM’s Jeong Min-jae read ‘벌써 (Already)’ and ‘오늘까지만 (Until Today)’ as the tracks that light up Taemin the vocalist, and wrote of the closing song ‘최면 (Hypnosis)’ that “the value of ‘최면(Hypnosis)’, the one straight ballad on the album to adopt a domestic pop structure, is also considerable”.

What happened

In Idology’s half-year round-up of 13 July 2016, two writers picked something from this record: Haemchwa chose Press It in the album section and Kim Yun-ha chose the ‘Drip Drop’ performance video in the music video section. The same performance video was picked again as one writer’s choice in the outlet’s best music videos of 2016.

Afterwards

The next solo record was the second full-length album MOVE, a year and eight months later on 16 October 2017.