TREASURE EP.2 : Zero To One

The record

TREASURE EP.2 : Zero To One is ATEEZ’s second mini album, released on 15 January 2019. The title track is ‘Say My Name’, the record is the second in the TREASURE series, and it arrived three months after the debut.

The album introduction carried by Bugs says the record “moves between the past and the present of ATEEZ”, and presents ‘Say My Name’ as a hybrid of country-flavoured EDM and trap. By the same text, production was again led by EDEN with BUDDY and LEEZ, and the members Kim Hong-joong and Song Min-gi are credited on the lyrics of every song. The introduction singles out ‘From’, a CD-only track: a song released before the debut, in the group’s trainee days, composed by Kim Hong-joong with lyrics by all eight members and addressed to the fandom.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) covered the record in 「1st Listen : 2019년 1월 중순」 — first listens, mid-January 2019 — dated 3 March 2019. Two writers filed.

Mano opened with the line that “the will to carry over the momentum of the last record is visible in a lot of ways”, and wrote of the title track that “‘Say My Name’, which mixes trap, hip-hop, EDM and a number of other genres with a hint of the ethnic, is by any reading the sequel to the debut song ‘Pirate King’”. Mano added that “the addictive hook circling the chorus and the sound that shifts and rushes thrillingly in the second half are also part of what carries the last record forward”, and called the record “a sophomore work of respectable finish for a rookie act barely three months from debut”.

Simdyang looked at the shape of it: “on the promoted songs ‘HALA HALA’ and ‘Say My Name’ the outward image — an idol act with hard performance and a world of its own — and on the album tracks a soft, private image the fandom can slip into, split in two.” The closing line: “an EP that, unexpectedly, runs straight through the textbook of an idol album.”

Billboard placed ‘Say My Name’ 13th in “The 25 Best K-pop Songs of 2019”, dated 29 December 2019. The entry describes the song as “seamlessly transitioning from quasi-bare acoustics to reverberating horns and dark synth loops” and calls it “more confident and eloquent”.

Among the tracks

Two songs from this record went on to Idology’s year-end feature 「결산 2019 : 놓치기 아까운 수록곡」 — B-sides of 2019 too good to miss — dated 27 March 2020.

Mano, who picked ‘Desire’, wrote that “a sound of a slippery texture, spreading cool like cold air on the skin, works on all the senses”, and added that “the reversal that rushes headlong after the rap verse hits its climax is attractive too”. The album introduction describes the same song as deep-house based.

Simdyang, who picked ‘Light’, offered it as the evidence for the phrase written earlier — “a soft, private image the fandom can slip into”. Simdyang wrote that “the vocal whispering low meets a warm melody and floats a settled affection”, and that the song “arrived like a fan song that captures the moment a fandom the group had seen as comrades in the search for ‘Treasure’ became the ‘Treasure’ itself”. In the column at release, Mano had recommended two songs from the record, ‘Desire’ and ‘Promise’.

Numbers

Billboard reported in a chart story dated 20 January 2020 that this record reached number five on the US World Albums chart, the group’s best position there at that point. The same story says it also reached number seven on the Heatseekers Albums chart, the group’s best on that tally.

‘Say My Name’ reached number eight on the World Digital Song Sales chart in February 2019. Billboard gave the figure in a chart story dated 17 October 2019, where it was the group’s best-placed song until ‘WONDERLAND’ passed it that month.

What came next

The TREASURE series continues with TREASURE EP.3 : One To All, out four months later, where the double title track returns.