Rookie

The record

Rookie is Red Velvet’s fourth mini album, released on 1 February 2017 with six tracks. The title track is ‘Rookie’. It puts the red side forward again after Russian Roulette five months earlier.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the title track as pop dance with a funky groove, and points to a lyric that likens the person one loves to a rookie and to the repeating hook. By the same text the arrangement is by The Colleagues, and the closing track ‘마지막 사랑 (Last Love)’ is a 1999 Echo song sung again here by Wendy, with Don Spike on the arrangement.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record as three writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its column on the records of early February 2017. Mimyo opened his note by writing that “the feeling the group’s earlier records gave, that this one is the real thing, carries on again”, and read the noisy texture of the title track as both a return to the prototype of the debut ‘행복 (Happiness)’ and, in its melodic parts, a soaking in the harmonic fullness of the velvet concept. He asked of the record: “Might we call this one completed form of Red Velvet?”

Hamchwa, in the same column, called it “an album that gives the impression of narrowing the group’s concept somewhat compared with before, while the character of each track stays distinct”. Of the way the title track divides its parts he wrote that “the pleasure of Seulgi’s and Wendy’s differently coloured voices crossing in contrast to carry the song is an effect hard to get from anything other than a small group of five”. Doldolmalling wrote in the same column that “each of the songs is plainly well made”, and chose ‘Happily Ever After’ as his recommendation.

Among the tracks

Tássia Assis of NME placed the title track ninth in the 127-song retrospective the outlet published on 1 August 2024 for the group’s tenth anniversary. She wrote that it is a track over which arguments never end as to whether it is a masterpiece, said that she stands on the first side, and added that although it took a while for the feeling to grow, once it does “the infectious joy of ‘Rookie’ is unbeatable”.

‘Happily Ever After’ is the song two writers put forward together. Idology’s Mimyo wrote that where the title track draws a rather real, boisterous girl, “‘Happily Ever After’, with its usual fairy-tale touch, takes a slightly headlong attitude and so shows a balance”. Doldolmalling called it the song that “would certainly have taken the first track had ‘Rookie’ not existed”, adding that it sits well with the album’s visual work. Assis wrote that its experimentation, which reaches as far as a car alarm, is commendable.

‘Body Talk’ is the track Idology’s two writers recommended in turn. Mimyo wrote that it “achieves an emotional expression of real weight, with a lyric that aches in ordinary life and an electronic sound”, and Hamchwa gave the last line of his note to recommending it. Assis placed it 38th in her retrospective, writing that it takes the listener “on an intergalactic voyage” and is “poised and atmospheric”.

Of ‘Little Little’, Assis wrote that “tiny sparks of hope fly out of this song’s uplifting melody” and that it grows in the heart little by little.

Afterwards

The summer mini album The Red Summer followed five months later, and the second full-length album Perfect Velvet came that November.