Song Review:: NCT Wish (NCT): COLOR- COLOR

• Release date: 2025 September 01

• Album tracklist: COLOR, Baby Blue, Surf, Cheat Code, Videohood, WICHU, Reel-ationship

• Album runtime: 21 minutes

 Apparently there's another NCT Wish song that dropped ahead of this that I didn't know about. Mildly peeved. It's fine. I may not get to it though if it doesn't get a win anywhere. Apologies for that.

I feel like I've heard the beginning of this song somewhere, and I feel like it's a first Gen song. I mean, SM had three groups: H.O.T, S.E.S, and Shinhwa. It wouldn't be out of the picture to borrow a snip of instrumental from one of them. After that slightly more mystical introduction, things get a little more industrial with the clanging and the street performance music vibe. We get the mystical back, which I appreciate as that means that the introduction isn't a one-and-done, and we get some interesting instruments that spice up the song a little. 

SM songs just sound like SM songs, and I get why if you like one group, you often like other SM groups. This one has shades of SHINee and EXO with a splash of Super Junior. We've got some good ad-libs going on in the second half of the song, which almost do a good job of showing off the group's vocals. But given that they're over a year-and-a-half past debut and they're both not an overly intense group nor are they at a company that doesn't really like ballads, they likely have at least one proper ballad to their discography. (SM the Ballad, anyone?) I was a little surprised by the limited amount of rapping here, and my normal gripes with the sing-song chanting don't apply because it's a strong color for the song and it's both brief and infrequent, so I don't feel like it's taking over the song. 

Okay, that was a cute music video. It's a vibes and visuals of a different...color, more so than it is a performance video. The choreography looks fun. I do have to say though that the part when they're talking about pastel colors and they're not actually changing to pastel colors? That was...I don't think I was momentarily annoyed by it, but it did pull me out briefly.