Your Choice

The record

Your Choice is SEVENTEEN’s eighth mini album, released on 18 June 2021 with six tracks. The title track is ‘Ready to love’. It followed the mini album Heng:garæ and the special album ; [Semicolon] by eight months.

The album introduction on Bugs places the record as the second chapter of the 2021 project “Power of ‘Love’”, and says the title means that your choice matters more than mine. The same text describes ‘Ready to love’ as an R&B-based pop song carried by a synth bass and a hard-hitting beat, about someone who has fallen for a friend and is ready to say so. One song each from the hip-hop, performance and vocal units is part of how the record is built, the introduction adds.

Reviews

NME’s Puah Ziwei reviewed the record eleven days after release, writing that “the rest of ‘Your Choice’ more than fulfills the group’s goal of crafting a worthy follow-up to their earlier hits”.

IZM’s Jeong Su-min reviewed it the same week. He wrote that “the three units that make up the group hold up SEVENTEEN’s identity”, and that “the members’ vocal ability, beyond what one expects, underlines a different side of a group built on performance, while the sincerity of the confession in the lyrics carries the title song’s key through and completes the album”.

Among the tracks

Both outlets picked out the opener ‘Heaven’s Cloud’ and the performance unit’s ‘Wave’. NME wrote that “the boyband have chosen a great opener for the mini-album with ‘Heaven’s Cloud’, encapsulating what we all love about SEVENTEEN and their sound”. Of ‘Wave’ the same review said the performance unit’s leader Hoshi has his fingerprints all over it, mixing sleek deep house beats and a funky bassline under a subtly infectious hook.

The vocal unit’s ‘Same Dream, Same Mind, Same Night’ drew both. IZM wrote that it “follows the key of 2000s Korean rhythm and blues and puts the vocal team’s practised harmony out in front”, and NME called it an R&B ballad that lives up to its 1990s influences, letting the vocal unit show their runs, harmonies and range. Of the third track, ‘Anyone’, NME wrote that it is a slow-burning anthem that makes great use of an electric guitar riff.

Numbers

Herald Muse, citing the Hanteo Chart, reported first-week sales of 1,364,127 copies. The same report said this was the highest first-week figure for any album released in 2021, and SEVENTEEN’s fourth consecutive record to pass a million.

By Billboard’s own chart history the album entered the Billboard 200 dated 3 July 2021 at number 15 — the first SEVENTEEN record to reach that chart.