What do you get after having a nice bowl of soup at a restaurant? Another soup of the same variety? Likely not. Perhaps a main course, or some focaccia – but you’ve had your fill of one thing, and now you’re ready for another. 

NCT DREAM’s latest comeback and titular song “Beat It Up” is fine. That’s the problem; it sounds like a regurgitation of many of their title songs. When you’re NCT DREAM, this isn’t a huge failure or anything; the music is well produced, and Haechan’s rich tone on the bridge softens the grit of the ‘90s style percussion they’re going for once again. But due to its reminiscence of previous songs of theirs – and even some from brother group NCT U – it is simply not memorable. The music video is as uninspired as the track, too, as though someone shoved the last three or so NCT DREAM comebacks into an AI and asked it to write and direct something that sounds exactly the same.

They’re part of a group with “neo” in the name after all. Listeners want to hear them change things up every now and then. And if that had you hopeful that the B-sides would be better… You may need to manage your expectations. 

Track two, “Rush,” doesn’t really know what genre it wants to be. Some may call this the group’s “neo” flair, but there’s a difference between pioneering alternative subgenres and songs that are an amalgamation of random sound bits that are basically producer flexes. Without Haechan, Chenle, and Renjun saving the day with their vocals, it wouldn’t sound like a complete song. It possesses the same chaos NCT 127’s “Punch” had when it first came out; even if you play it several times in a row, you can’t totally recall how the song even went. 

“Cold Coffee” and “Butterflies” are where things get better. The former has a slow buildup and a surprisingly anthemic chorus. The lines ‘If I cry on a song, would you know? / I’m unbroken’ are nice little emotional beats to sing along to, while the power guitars in the background drive its sincerity right home. The rappers’ little adlibs sit nicely on the chorus too: nothing out of place. 

The sweetness of “Butterflies” might’ve fooled you into thinking we’d entered the soft end of the EP, until “Tempo” comes on and you receive terrible whiplash. It’s loud, bassy, and bleeding with ‘90s elements. We’d expect a song like this as the debut title track of a rookie boy group in 2021, back when everyone was obsessed with sticking ‘90s hip-hop nostalgia everywhere possible. EP closer “TRICKY” has the same loud feel, but at least it’s more original-sounding.

We don’t know what happened to the writers of ISTJ who gave us “Broken Melodies” and “Poison”. Our rating of “Beat It Up” can’t go below a 3 purely for the boys’ unshakable talents themselves – those SM Entertainment vocal trainers run their operations like the military. But it’s as though someone put an F1 driver on a tricycle. It’s just fine; if it comes on the K-pop radio, it can be enjoyed to an extent, but a casual fan probably wouldn’t think to put this album on before any of NCT DREAM’s other. It’s not a disappointment because it’s objectively bad by any means. It’s a disappointment because we know NCT DREAM are capable of so much more. 

Rating:

Written by Maddie Armstrong

Featured image courtesy of SM Entertainment

_{View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to films, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. With rich content already available to our readers, we aim to expand our reach and grow alongside our audience by delving deeper into emerging platforms such as K-pop and Asian music more broadly. At the same time, we remain committed to exploring the vibrant and ever-evolving global landscape of film, music, and the arts, celebrating the immense talent and creativity that define these industries worldwide.}