Unlock My World

The record

Unlock My World is the first full-length album by fromis_9, released on 5 June 2023. It carries ten tracks, and the title track is the second of them, ‘#menow’. It came a year after the mini album from our Memento Box, about five years after the group’s 2018 debut.

The album introduction on Bugs says the title stands for unlocking one’s own world and facing a wider one, and that the jacket photographs were released in three concepts: reality, imagine and notyet. The title track, ‘#menow’, is about wanting to show oneself as one is. At the release showcase reported by The Korea Herald, Lee Sae-rom said the members were determined to show good music on their first LP and poured themselves into every small detail, and Roh Ji-sun said the record portrays their will to unlock themselves and head into a larger world.

Reviews

NME’s Gladys Yeo reviewed the album ten days after release. She wrote that it is “aptly titled”, and that “fromis_9’s first-ever full-length studio album is a delectable taster of their musical palette, and ushers in a new era for the octet”. Of the title track she wrote: “This jubilant ode to self-love sets the tone for the rest of the record, and brings to the fore a more mature, introspective side of the group as they make a timely exploration into their identity.” Her closing line reads: “Despite some missteps, ‘Unlock My World’ allows us to witness how far fromis_9’s identity – now in full bloom – has come, and points to even greater things to come.”

Idology picked the record among its 15 K-pop albums of 2023, and Mano, who wrote the entry, opened it this way: “If you asked me what the most elegantly finished full-length album in K-pop right now is, I would pull out this one without hesitation.” He wrote that it “gives the highest listening satisfaction without any cheap, nerve-jolting element, and it is a record that plants a confident peak on a fully ripened career”, and closed the entry by calling it “a fine work that proves their own presence completely, through an endless allure”.

Among the tracks

The opening track ‘Attitude’ is the one both NME pieces put first. The album review wrote that its chic dance-pop instrumental opens the record, and that “it’s a gorgeous introduction to the record, acting as a portal to fromis_9’s world”. Half a year later the same outlet placed the song sixteenth among its 25 best K-pop songs of 2023, in an entry that calls it “an emblem of their newfound carefree confidence” and writes: “The song feels like a spell wrapped in a satin veil that unfolds into a risk-taking adventure for the ages – those that go into the unknown but linger forever in the memory.”

Of the seventh track, ‘Bring It On’, NME wrote that it is “a minimalistic R&B pop song punctuated by breezy whistles and the entrancing twangs of a traditional string instrument”, and that, “subdued but never boring, it quietly takes its place as one of the girl group’s strongest B-sides of all time”. The Korea Herald reported that the song was given to the group by Bang Si-hyuk, the chairman of Hybe. The same review treats the sixth track ‘Prom Night’ as a sleek, playful dance-pop number carrying a smattering of UK garage, and the closing track ‘Eye Contact’, which the tracklist above prints under its Korean title ‘눈맞춤’, is the song all the members wrote lyrics for, according to the same report.

Numbers

Idology placed the record among the 15 K-pop albums of 2023 in its year-end feature on 5 January 2024. NME put the opening track ‘Attitude’ sixteenth in its own 25 best K-pop songs of 2023 on 19 December 2023.