Song Review:: NCT Wish: poppop- poppop

• Release date: 2025 April 14

• Album tracklist: poppop, Melt Inside My Pocket, Design, 1000, Silly Dance, Still 3PM

• Album runtime: 18 minutes

 Okay, this song shouldn't make me emotional. I started a certain group's tenth anniversary release and realized that my current emotional space is not good for that. So I can't right now. Instead I'm going to go for a rookie group that I've liked so far, NCT Wish. They're adorable and with how much I absolutely adore both Dunk Shot and Steady, I'm tentatively hopeful for this one as well. Also, the title track is over three minutes, so the fact that I had to round up to the eighteen minutes (it was still pretty close) isn't too much of a problem for me. Also, I definitely need to get this review done because they've gotten wins, and y'all know what that means.

Okay, so this song has more of the classic NCT sound than the two tracks they promoted with the last time, both of which I absolutely loved. The bass is low and throbbing in a couple of sections of the song, but the majority of the song lingers in a pretty standard skittering beat. As far as my personal taste goes, the trap elements also aren't not something I'm fully enamored with, but it feels familiar. However, the section where it slows down and we get all melodic and pretty? I am eating that up, and it's providing a delightful contrast to the rest of the song.

It's not a secret that I prefer melody over rap, chants, and shouting. I have warmed up more to rap, a necessity when so many of my biases across the groups are rappers, and chanting and shouting depend on the frequency within the song and frequency in other music I'm hearing. In other words, variation, for me, is key. I'm not a fan of how often the "pop" comes up. To me, it feels more like a ploy to create something viral and catchy. It also doesn't feel like the limited amount of NCT Wish I've listened to (haven't heard a lot of the b-sides, but I have been listening to at least their Korean tracks since debut because I was curious, but does feel largely like a general "NCT-style" song that's trying really hard to be that rather than an NCT Wish specific song. I say that while acknowledging that it's racking up wins left and right. But rather than being a song with a lot of distinct personality, like a song from U, 127, Dream, or WayV, there's a insubstantiality to it that I don't appreciate and I think that's reflected in how long it's taken me to write this. Now, do I think the entire song needs to be tossed? Absolutely not, that would be tossing the baby out with the bathwater (idiom). The slowdown really does provide enough of a texture change for the song that even though after that returns to the status quo shortly after, . And I think in general, they do a good job with this song, which I'd hazard a guess that the fans would agree with. I just don't understand why SM would give them a song for their title track that doesn't add a lot and doesn't actually allow any of them to really show off what they can do and have been trained for. And unless something has changed in the last five years with SM's training, the whole group should be absolutely incredibly rappers or vocalists or both. There are hints of it here (and we've seen good examples from their previous songs) but the members as a whole are shackled by inanity. Despite that, I'm still agreeing with the number of wins it's getting.

Three days I've been trying to get this post out. Hard part is over. Okay. Music video. Please let there be a storyline. It's a whole minute longer than the track, so I may be getting my wish.

...Pun not intended, but it did make me smile.

Okay. This song is hummingbird feeder sweet. I really kind of love their genre of music video where they're just all being wingmen for the one who's dating or trying to date. It's so adorable. And yes, we did get a storyline to the music video that's strong and very clear, so I'm pretty happy about this. I'm also pleased to report that this is a case where the song gets redeemed for me a significant amount because of the music video. I love it when things like this happen. The choreography is rubbing me a little bit the wrong way, but I'm sure that if I watch one of the stages, I'll like it better. That is usually the case.