Song Review:: TWS: play hard- Head Shoulders Knees Toes {Pre-Release}

• Release date: 2025 September 22

• Album tracklist: Head Shoulders Knees Toes

• Album runtime: 3 minutes

 So the fun thing that Pledis is doing with TWS that they do not do with Seventeen is TWS gets pre-release singles. Every single one of their mini albums so far have included one. It's a good strategy and they're young enough to have the energy for it, though I do worry a little considering the maknae, Kyungmin, is still in school. Which I don't think will be a problem come the new year as I think he'll be graduating. In other news, I am also tentatively hopeful for the whole album given that this one is almost three minutes long. Also, can I just say that I'm kind of in love with the marketing for this? Tearing off the old albums to expose this one? Like saying that this is what was hiding behind their cute image? Very nice. I'm impressed and pleased with this.

The instrumental for this one reminds me of Cyberpunk 2077, which is a little bit of a weird association for me because this group is kind of the opposite of that game. That being said, there's some subtle variation to it that stabilizes the song and provides a strong foundation for the song as a whole. It's a lot more industrial than we've heard from them, though not fully industrial, and I'm curious to see what kind of choreography we get.

My desire to have a song swap with TWS and xikers has never been stronger. It's fine. I'll live. TWS is a year and a half after debut and proving that they've got more than the cute boyhood image under their belts, but this feels like a good point for that natural progression away from debut image. I'm less happy about the fact that there's a lot of rap, but that's a me thing and something I've been working through because of K-Pop and the fact that so many of my bias line do rap as their main position. Forced adaptation, one might say. However, we have a repetitive chorus that is a single line repeated six times, making for that line being rapped in the chorus alone eighteen times, which is really not my favorite because from a writing standpoint, it feels lazy and depowering to the intended impact. When we get more singing, we get some surprisingly nice runs that show off their vocals and provide a great contrast to the heavier rapping, and the ad-libs are, in particular, great.

Oreo Shinyu. I'm calling it now. He, Jihoon, and Dohoon are going to end up being the bigger members of the group in terms of muscle mass. That's the other thing I love about their music videos. We always get a storyline. My knees hurt watching the choreography, which also made me laugh, but at the same time I'm acknowledging that this choreography looks intense. If you're looking for a new workout choreography, here you go. Also, weirdly, I almost feel like this could be happening in the same universe as Seventeen's Maestro.