The Velvet

The record

The Velvet is Red Velvet’s second mini album, released on 17 March 2016 with eight tracks — five new songs and three arrangements of the title track, ‘7월 7일 (One Of These Nights)’. Six months after The Red put the red half of the name forward, this record puts the other half on its cover.

The album introduction on Bugs describes the title track as an R&B ballad joining an orchestra, dreamlike piano and a polished rhythm, with a lyric drawn from the folk tale of the Herdsman and the Weaver and carrying the hope of meeting again. By the same text Daniel “Obi” Klein and Kenzie worked on the record, and ‘장미꽃 향기는 바람에 날리고 (Rose Scent Breeze)’ is a 1989 Lee Soo-man song sung again here by Wendy, Seulgi and Joy.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the record as five writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its column on the records of mid-March 2016. Yu Je-sang called the mini album “something like an answer of its own to the question of what Red Velvet can do”, and closed his note: “Enjoy instead a cool and composed Red Velvet.” Hamchwa found the record’s significance in the fact that the individual voices come through clearly this time, where on the previous album the force of the concept had arrived first.

Mimyo, in the same column, held something back about the range of genres the velvet concept can take on, but wrote that the record lets the listener enjoy the gap in the air when a grown-up song is sung in a young voice. Masitneun Pahita wrote that the velvet line seems to keep R&B at its centre, and named the title track and two others as what the record achieves.

Among the tracks

Of the title track ‘7월 7일 (One Of These Nights)’, Idology’s Masitneun Pahita wrote that it “carries the weight of a title song, moving the listener here and there inside a single song and delivering a longing that runs past time”. Mimyo wrote of the same track that “the warm, old-film sound of ‘7월 7일’, built by placing a great many instruments to effect, brings out the classic character of the velvet concept”. Doldolmalling, writing about the four versions on the tracklist, said that after playing the album through, “what stays in an ear that has heard the same lyric and the same melody over and over is, in the end, the cry of ‘let us meet again’”.

Tássia Assis of NME placed the same song 54th in the 127-song retrospective the outlet published on 1 August 2024, noting that the lyric is drawn from a Korean folk tale explaining the origins of the Chilseok festival and that it longs for a reunion between loved ones. She added that various motifs in the music video have been read as recalling the 2014 Sewol ferry tragedy, and called the song “a mournful, yet beautiful rendition that proves the group can excel way beyond the expected”.

‘Cool Hot Sweet Love’ is the song three writers put forward together. Masitneun Pahita said it feels like a track by a mainstream pop R&B group; Mimyo wrote that “the chorus, which comes at you with a jolt, makes up for everything”. Assis placed it 17th in her retrospective: “As the luxurious R&B arrangement takes over this song, its icy, mysterious bite melts away like chocolate.”

Of ‘Light Me Up’, Mimyo wrote that it is “an appealing song that reaches for a slightly futuristic R&B using pitch shifts”, and Masitneun Pahita called it a love song that is “rhythmic and furtive”. Assis placed the track 93rd.

Afterwards

Russian Roulette turned back to the red side six months later, and the velvet name returned to an album cover in November 2017 with Perfect Velvet.