TASTE

The record

TASTE is Haechan’s first full-length album, released on 8 September 2025 with 11 tracks. The title track is ‘CRZY’. It is his first solo record.

SM Entertainment’s album introduction on Bugs says the record is built on R&B, taken through soul, hip hop and jazz, and that the title TASTE carries two senses at once: sharing the musical taste he has gathered since childhood, and tasting the music he has made for the first time on his own. The same text describes the title track as an R&B pop-dance track that lays a guitar stroke and singing over a rough, strong hip-hop funky rhythm of the early 2000s. By that account the opening track ‘Camera Lights’ is neo-soul built from jazzy keys and a Philadelphia-style sound, ‘ADRENALINE’ reworks 2000s club-tune hip-hop R&B, ‘Intermission’ is an interlude, and the closing ‘Outro (Back In The Studio)’ ends the record on a return to the studio. The eighth track, ‘WYN? (Feat. 김하온 (HAON))’, features the rapper HAON.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) placed the record on its list of the 20 albums of 2025, published on 31 December 2025. Binunmul wrote of the opening track that “‘Camera Lights’, which begins with a bass riff hummed in the studio, stamps the theme the artist intended on the album in a single stroke”, and of the record’s shape that “this circular structure draws the listener deep in and gives the album’s storytelling a firm persuasiveness”. On the full-length as a form, he wrote that “even within the current of a K-pop industry in which every unit keeps getting shorter, it makes clever use of the organic devices only a full album can have — an intro, an interlude and an outro — and, without letting go of completeness and justification, throws light once more on the essential value of the ‘full album’”.

Clash placed ‘ADRENALINE’, a track from the record, third on its list of the biggest K-pop statements of 2025, published on 19 December 2025. Natalia Kabenge wrote that it is “a beautifully executed hip-hop and R&B fusion track”, and that “‘ADRENALINE’ embraces a cutting synth as its driving force, with the remainder of the song built out by the singer’s dextrous vocals”.

Among the tracks

Of the title track, Binunmul wrote that “the lead single ‘CRZY’ that follows swims skilfully over an ever-changing rhythm, showing a keen performance and a high-resolution vocal at the same time”. The album introduction says its lyrics hold the push and pull of a chance meeting.

Of ‘ADRENALINE’, Kabenge wrote that “echoed adlibs, three part harmonies, and masterful vocal runs are flawlessly married, leaving nothing to be desired, but much to be discovered”. Binunmul set the track beside ‘Roll With Me’: “tracks such as ‘ADRENALINE’ and ‘Roll With Me’ move freely between force and ease, opening out a vocal spectrum of Haechan’s that seems to hold all four seasons.”

Of the ninth track, Binunmul wrote that “‘Should Be’, the straight R&B that arrives in the latter half, lets go of the tension held tight and projects the texture of the voice itself without reserve, and with that dramatic contrast it becomes the album’s highlight”. He noted that the record could have closed quietly on ‘Grey Rain’, but that it instead hums the melody of the first track and returns to the studio. The album introduction describes ‘Should Be’ as a straight R&B track about the contradictory feelings that follow a parting, and ‘Grey Rain’ as an acoustic R&B track drawing the emptiness behind a glittering life.

Around it

The music video went up on the official SMTOWN channel on the day of release.