Song Review:: HxW (Seventeen): BEAM- 96ers {Debut}

• Release date: 2025 March 10

• Album tracklist: PINOCCHIO (feat. So!YoON), 96ers, STUPID IDIOT

• Album runtime: 7 minutes

 My level of coherence for this one might be a little low as I'm going to be waking up for it. This part I'm writing before I go to sleep so that I'm not trying to do all the things at once. So. I think this is one of the subunits that has been so deeply hoped for from the fanbase that I'm happy for the older fans who finally get it. And also, now we've got something of a pattern getting established for the enlistments. We'll have that confirmed depending on who the next subunit is. It's a lovely farewell-for-now present from them. That's all I'm saying. Although the run time is making me twitch a little.

This is the most Hoshi and Woozi thing I've ever seen or heard in my life.

And I'm deeply amused by the fact that this is the performance leader and the vocal leader, and this is a hip-hop song. The energy level through the instrumentals is pretty constant because the bassline stays at a constant rhythm through the entire less-than-three-minute song, there are a couple of brief bursts of energy so the average energy level is slightly higher than the general bassline energy. We get the appearance of the cowbell, which I'm not positive that I'm right on what instrument that is, but that's what it sounds like. We've got a lot of the skittering percussion as well, with random vocalizations that sound like one of them got a hold of some helium (three guesses as to which one it would have been, although that's likely not what happened).

They spend the entire song vocally circling around each other. And hearing Woozi briefly rap? That was not on my Carat 2025 Bingo sheet. And the "Hoshi baby, Woozi baby" part will live in my brain rent free from now on. This whole thing is such a flex on both their parts. Like, you have the essence of Hoshi oozing out of the entire song, with Woozi flexing the songs he wrote over the last ten years. We get less of the impressive, gorgeous vocals I know both of them possess, but this is their project where they get to do what they want, and they sing all the time, so I'm a little disappointed but unsurprised by the absence. And the entire song's lyrics are just a flex to their bond as brothers and everything they've done over the past, what, fifteen years? Fourteen years? They've literally spent half of their lives together at this point. And their harmonizing? The last, like, thirty seconds of the song are incredible, and not just because we get Woozi using that big voice of his, but the call and response from this entire song is encapsulated in those thirty seconds.

There's less of a storyline than I would have liked, but the storyline, AKA the story of Hoshi and Woozi, is bursting out of the lyrics so strongly that it combines with the concept of an art exhibit to create a strong storyline, that of "We're limited edition, an unbeatable pair with an unbreakable bond. All you can do is look at how amazing we are. Because we are amazing." Their stylists need raises. They're both looking so good with their hair and just... Okay, full disclosure, I did pick both of them up as biases when I saw Seventeen in person because the three leaders own the stage like nothing I've ever seen before (Woozi's charisma is straight up off the charts and he metaphorically bowled me over) except with the second and first gen idols and I reluctantly added them to my first bias. and now it's like half the group and I don't know what I'm doing with myself. So I'm obviously biased in the most literal definition of the word. But, objectively speaking, these two men are looking incredible in this music video and it's a really cool play of differences working together to make one. Even with their hair colors right now. It's a full yin-yang situation where outwardly, they seem completely different but they share so many similarities and those differences make them fit together. Also, and I don't know how many of the Carats are going to catch this, but both Hoshi and Woozi were in NU'EST's debut music video. One of NU'EST's colors is bright pink, so I don't know if those bright pink outfits was deliberate or if it was just because they look so good in the color, but I thought that was a quiet little shout-out to where their careers started. I also thought of the inside joke that had Woozi lose his temper during Insomnia Zero, so both heartwarming and funny.