SHINee - Odd - The 4th Album - Reaction and Review
Added 2024-08-12 16:23:36 +0000 UTCSHINee 'Odd' album was an incredibly interesting deep dive into a K-pop group like no other.
Comments
You really need to hear some F(x) album. They were the most experimental one out of all sm at the time
rose
2025-05-13 20:12:24 +0000 UTCAs for the live performances with the songs from this album, they have performed most of them at SHINee World IV and V concerts, and as with most of their songs the best performances are from the concerts so I recommend watching these, with only a few exceptions that are Love Sick and Odd Eye. I'd say they are a bit better suited for a smaller stage or just looked better to me in these particular performances on music stages, they have even performed Odd Eye at one of the year-end music award shows. Love Sick + View at Music Bank: https://youtu.be/orMG3OJtSO0 Odd Eye at Inkigayo (Key's eye-patch is iconic): https://youtu.be/pPp9da0-Q_E Odd Eye + View at KBS Song Festival: https://youtu.be/WPzSbIKbI9o SHINee World IV contains Love Sick, as well as An Encore and An Ode To You. SHINee World V contains both Alive and Trigger in a singular set together with Sherlock which I'd recommend but you already included Trigger separately for your next reaction which is also fine but just letting you know, there's also An Encore but as I said earlier I think SWC4 An Encore is the best. They also performed Black Hole, Odd Eye, and Farewell My Love. The latter I'd very highly recommend watching as the full set: Farewell My Love, Aside (very popular, particularly in Korea, OST sounding slower song/ballad), Don't Let Me Go (that you loved from 1 of 1) and Please Don't Go which is a duet song by Jonghyun and Onew. It's an iconic set and I think one of the best vocal sets when it comes to their Korean vocal-heavy songs/ballads. https://youtu.be/GVo4BqXy-T8 starts from 1:40:00 They also performed all of the songs from the repackage at SHINee World V too: Married To The Music, Hold You, Chocolate and Savior.
Lawol
2024-08-13 15:47:31 +0000 UTC55:30 Alive, just like many of their songs, talk about shine/shining and blue light which is a clear reference to SHINee and Shawols pearl aqua light/color. I understand it as SHINee feels alive and energized the most when they see their fans at concerts doing what they love the most - performing. Together with Trigger they are some of the darkest and most hard-hitting SHINee songs. 1:12:44 An Encore is one of fan favorite bside tracks that they tend to, as the title entails, perform at the encore part of the concerts. It's just so big and grand vocally and beautiful sounding, it also gives me OST vibes possibly even more than An Ode To You, but I like it very much. 1:15:30 actually, Farewell My Love is the 2nd one with the least listens/plays not Trigger, I do agree that both deserve way more, as well as Alive. One more thing about Farewell My Love, you both enjoyed it very much during the reaction and even said it was one of your favorite tracks but then completely ignored it at the end :'D I think it was the only song that you didn't mention at all haha. And sadly that's the unfortunate trend/reality with Farewell My Love even among Shawols, personally I really really like it and it's one of my favorite tracks on the whole album but it's super underrated and overlooked, maybe because it's sandwiched between songs such as Trigger, Alive and Woof Woof that are way more in your face, not sure. But I just really enjoy vocally-heavy and more melancholic songs from SHINee such as Farewell My Love. I think it's one of their best vocal performances ever. 1:16:56 I think major reason as to why Alive and Trigger doesn't have many listens is because even for SHINee, songs like these are not very prominent within their discography, like sure they have some other comparable songs but it's few and far in between, so I feel like most Shawols don't really vibe with them as much. Especially back then. Now a quite similar song 'Juice' on the Hard album got way more attention but it was also more promoted. 1:18:55 I'm pretty basic when it comes to this album, except Farewell My Love that as I said is very underrated, has gotta be my favorite song/bside on the album, I do like the other most popular tracks: An Encore, Love Sick and Odd Eye (in a similar but not fixed order). View makes the top 5 cut if we include it, if not then it's Alive then Trigger and then the rest. 1:21:06 maybe you could take notes when reacting to longer albums to look at and refresh your memory, because it seemed to me that Valen enjoyed Love Sick a lot during the listen and based on the comments after it :D but I will agree that Black Hole and for me Romance are a bit more forgettable, they are by no means bad but SHINee has many songs of a similar direction that I like way more. An Ode To You is beautiful, but a bit too slow for my liking, and actually I'm not the biggest fan of Woof Woof either (sorry Theo and other Woof Woof enthusiasts :D). Don't get me wrong I think that the live performance is quite enjoyable but the song itself is verging on the side of being slightly too cheesy for me. 1:23:57 I agree that albums shoudn't be compared but I'd also rate it a bit lower than 1 of 1 (1 of 1 has got to be close to a perfect album for me). I do, however, think that the songs on the repackaged/extended version elevates it to a 9 for me, while in case of regular 'Odd' I'd pretty much agree with Valen and rate it in the range of 8.7-8.8 lol, but 8.5 is a very valid score as well. Definitely check out the repackaged single 'Married To The Music' on Youtube! It's another classic, funky, feel-good SHINee song with a very fun and pretty grotesque music video.
Lawol
2024-08-13 12:44:19 +0000 UTC0:46 perhaps our understanding/definition of 'timeless' is slightly different or I hyped it up a bit too much after the expectations were raised very high by 1 of 1 :D I'm no expert when it comes to the details of the instrumental and other musical intricacies but just the overall sound and vibe of this album also feels quite timeless or ahead of it's time to me, sure not on the same level as 1 of 1 but having some experimental songs most notably Trigger, Alive and Woof Woof, and even Odd Eye (maybe the instrumental and the sounds that they use is not something unusual or too experimental but the way they chose to sing the chorus in this high falsetto creates this sorta haunting/mysterious and quite unique atmosphere) having in mind that this album is even older than 1 of 1 and is literally less than a year away from being a whole decade (10 years) old is quite timeless or was for the most part ahead of its time as well. And I wanna say in general, SHINee just has so many songs that kinda sound old but new at the same time no matter the era (I'd say songs like Farewell My Love, An Ode To You, and An Encore are like that from this album, they were not ground breaking nor experimental back then nor would they be now but I guess the more vocal-heavy, slower songs and ballads like these share this quality). 5:20 As you mentioned, some of the older songs could use a 'revamp' or be remastered in terms of production quality in order to be released today but I feel like the backbone/blueprint is there to be enjoyed in any era. Odd Eye is one of those songs, it's among the list of SHINee songs that were written and co-produced by Jonghyun, and he very deliberately wrote the song and distributed the lines to perfectly match SHINee's vibe and accomodate to every member's strengths. Personally I haven't heard quite another song like Odd Eye, it's a testament to Jonghyun's talent and one of SHINee's colors. I don't quite know if the album was named Odd because of Odd Eye but it might as well be, as it is the opener track and it sets the tone for the rest of the album, but it's not a title track or lead single that is View. Odd Eye, however, was one of the main bsides that they promoted with at music shows alongside View (they also performed Love Sick and An Encore a couple of times). 13:57 interesting that you think of Love Sick as a funk song, I mean sure it probably does have some funk elements but most of the reviews (and I believe the official description as well) I've seen describe it as more of a pop R&B track and to me it also doesn't sound like full on funk (even comparing it to Romance or Black Hole on this album that are more traditionally funky). As Ofra mentioned, it's a continuation to Replay so it does hold a special meaning for Shawols, that for sure adds to the reason why it's one of the most popular songs on the album but I personally just really like the song regardless of the connection. It's nothing too extravagant but just the melodies and the vibe of it works very well for me, it's one of the most SHINee'esk feel good type of songs on the album. 14:57 you said View was very different to what you heard on the album so far, well this whole album is just very oddly different haha, same can literally be said about most of the songs on the album as it contains many various sounds and genres, unlike the 1 of 1 album which was way more uniform. Not to say that either one is better or worse but I do believe it's more difficult to have a diverse set of songs and yet make it into a singular body of work that still somehow works together. Just a little comment in Odd's defense. Sure, deep house was up at the time, but I think it's one of the genres that did age well, or in particular View did. To me it still sounds very fresh and i never get tired of it. It definitely has the production quality for a lead single. 21:20 View wasn't just any deep house song, as Ofra said it brought deep house to Kpop and it literally became a cultural reset. It's one of the best examples where views doesn't do justice to the popularity/fame and relevance that the song holds (even with the 100 and so million of plays) the power that View holds is more of a 1 billion views type of song really. There's probably no Korean that hasn't heard View and it's still very popular/trending to this day. A big reason is that it's been used for many many TV shows, videos, tiktoks and whatnot when showing scenery or some other 'beautiful view' they play the 'Neomu areumdaun-daun-daun-daun view' part. It was also the first more tuned down choreography for a title track where they didn't feel too exhausted after performing it, they said it was first a very strange feeling as if they hadn't performed anything but then realized that it doesn't always have to be something super physically challenging to still be good. 27:20 while they have some songs that could be done by EXO and vice-versa SHINee for the most part definitely has a very distinct sound that can only be done by SHINee and they are more experimental on average. I'd say the group with most parallels would actually be f(x) as they are often called the sibling/sister group to SHINee and both were branded as experimental groups. F(x) probably has even more experimental songs to be honest. But I haven't come across anything remotely close to SHINee among boy groups. 35:15 Trigger was co-produced by an American songwriter Rodnae 'Chikk' Bell who has worked with another famous American producer in Kpop Dwayne Allen Abernathy that goes by 'Dem Jointz' on SHINee's hit title Don't Call Me (Dem Jointz has also produced SHINee's song 'Juice' and many many other popular Kpop songs, mostly for SM artists). They are both known for experimental sound. Recently Umu from ReacttotheK interviewed them about working together and secrets to writing such songs FYI: https://youtu.be/XpwFeiPFfi8 40:50 Farewell My Love is essentially a more modern take on the 90's R&B ballad and they slayed it. 46:12 oh yes for sure they have many of such 'OST' sounding songs if you will, especially in their Japanese discography. About their voice color, FACTS in my opinion, Jonghyun and Onew have the most unique tones but all of them are very distinctive particularly in the group context as everyone sounds so different from each other, there's never a time where I would be double guessing myself who sang this or that line (which happens quite often with most other groups for me) it took me very little time to easily tell all of the SHINee member's apart. AND Minho can most definitely sing! He wouldn't get that much lines in their early days but would progressively get more and more as the years go by, first in the Japanese songs as they tend to be more vocal-driven, but later in Korean too. He debuted as a soloist releasing an EP in 2022 and some other singles throughout the years and is not to be looked down upon when it comes to vocals, he improved so much.
Lawol
2024-08-13 11:27:02 +0000 UTC
