Song Review:: LNGSHOT: SHOT CALLERS- Moonwalkin' {Debut}

• Release date: 2026 January 13

• Album tracklist: Backseat, Saucin', Moonwalkin', FaceTime, Never Let Go

• Album runtime: 15 minutes

 Okay, Jay Park's kids have officially debuted so congrats to them! Whoo! I saw a comment from him today that he thinks K-Pop has lost its romanticism, and LNGSHOT are his way of correcting that. Regardless of whether or not he's correct, and whether or not you agree with him, that's a bold statement to make and have be the mission statement, so to speak, for a group. It does give me a very specific forward facing expectation to what they're going to be doing in the future, but, for now, we've got this. And because of the maknae's age, this is going on Underage Protocol. But, even though I'm very disappointed in that, we've got an average of three minutes per song and the title track is a very healthy three-and-a-half minutes.

It’s funny that you can hear Jay Park’s R&B roots in this song. It’s a very smooth song and a very different song from their pre-release, which I am ecstatic about. Range from the get-go is so important for a debuting group. Most of this song, instrumentally, seems to be either the same few bars repeated, or silence at key points. I am incredibly grateful for the rests. We do get a little bit of a break from that sound as well as some audience participation clapping, a couple of times throughout the song, but even in the sections where we get those changes, they don’t alter the sound of the song which is in one style which is a little disappointing. Still, I'm going to weight the fact that we've got two very different genres going on heavily because debuting groups need that in their early songs.

One of them sounds very young compared to everyone else, like his voice hasn't actually deepened yet. There's a lot of stylistic autotune applied, which just isn't my favorite and is probably going to be the reason I don't add this to the 2026 playlist of the greats. There's another song that this one reminds me of, but I cannot place it at all, which is a shame. We don't have any really big vocals, but I am hearing some runs that I wish were expanded on because they've at least got potential. I think. Again, the autotune makes it hard to tell.

There's a very specific genre that this music video falls into, and while I recognize it, I can't place the specifics. It's also part of that genre of pining men that I just love. It's a good genre. Largely, the music video is a vibes and visuals, pretty low risk but it makes sense why this was done because it's not often we hear a debut album with an R&B title track in K-Pop, so having one "safe" thing was probably a strategic move and not one I'm overly upset about because I understand it. And, last thing, I'm amused at how many comments are saying something along the lines of "Korean Justin Bieber". Which is funny for two parts: one, I didn't really listen to him much so I'm not going to be the leading expert on this, and two, I don't necessarily disagree with it now that I've seen that statement.