Song Review:: Minho (SHINee): CALL BACK- CALL BACK

- November 05, 2024

Release date: 2024 November 04

Album tracklist: CALL BACK, Slow Down, FIREWORKS, Came And Left Me, Something About U, Round Kick, Affection, I Don't Miss You, Because Of You, Would You Mind

Album runtime: 31 minutes

And with this marks the last active member of SHINee to release an album in the latter half of this year. Most excitingly for him, this is his first full album! Whoo! A quiet 박수 for him because my dog is asleep, and I don't want to wake him. They've all been busy bees, and if I am allowed to be a little bit greedy, I'd like as much of a full group album as I can get in the next couple of months, but I also understand if that's not feasible. But! Regardless, the Shawols have been well fed the last little bit, and I'm grateful for that for them.

Minho also teamed up with Sohee of RIIZE on FIREWORKS as well as Ningning of aespa on Because Of You. I know that both groups are very impressive in their own right, but Minho has at least twelve years seniority on either of them, and I think it's cute that he kept it in the family for this one. Hopefully it was by choice and not necessity, but I choose to believe the former.

The very beginning with the talking at what sounds like is meant to be a café or a piano lounge or something was cool. But I just had to giggle a little bit. You remember when you're a kid and you get access to a keyboard for the first time and you start with the preset beats and then just go to town with the piano sounds? That's what the instrumentals of CALL BACK remind me of. The car revving was a nice addition and does make it a little bit more professional, but every time the instrumentals go back to that, I can't quite take it seriously. We've got some audience participation snapping that I appreciate a lot, always a fan of that. And there's a streak of interesting true techno that runs through the song and occasionally exposes itself.

Without looking at the lyrics, my headcanon is this is the sequel to Don't Call Me, the moment when you start regretting your hasty anger, even if it was justified, and accept the loss and lonely longing you feel, but it doesn't change the emotions you feel. And as much as I think of Minho of a rapper, he's still an excellent vocalist especially with the R&B elements this song has. Even though he's singing softly, there's still an audible restrained power to his voice. He doesn't belt, but he does have moments where he holds the notes long enough to gently finish them off with a touch of his vibrato.

Oh, he's very pretty. The stylists did an excellent job with this comeback, and he looks very good in pink. The hints of choreography we get are deceptively lazy, and I have a feeling that the choreography in full is incredibly precise. Although I do have to admit, as much as I love the choreography, if I looked out my window and saw him dancing like that, that would be a no from me. It's a little too weird. However, that's not the "second gen K-Pop weird" I was waiting for. Television for a head. Sticking his head underwater and singing to fish. Climbing through strangers' cars while they're caught in a traffic jam. That's more what I was expecting, although it's still very tame by those standards. And the motorcyclist just casually going through the middle of the traffic jam at the end was surprisingly funny.