Revisiting SEVENTEEN’s Solo and Subunit Releases
A compilation of past song, album, and music video reviews!
While my SEVENTEEN ten-year anniversary series focuses on their full-group projects…
The Ultimate SEVENTEEN MV Ranking (part 1 and part 2)
Every SEVENTEEN Album and EP, Ranked
The Hidden Gem on Each SEVENTEEN Album
The 17 Most Definitive SEVENTEEN Songs
What HAPPY BURSTDAY Represents
… their subunit and solo works deserve some love too! Here are my past reviews of it, all in one place!
BSS’s SECOND WIND
From the “Best of February 2023” Top 20 List: SECOND WIND is a curated playlist of mood-boosters for each part of the day. “Fighting” gives listeners a caffeine-like jolt with its celebratory sound and encouraging lyrics for handling hectic mornings: “Gotta keep going, what else can you do?” They encourage listeners to stay optimistic about the day’s potential, because, as featured artist Lee Young Ji raps, even if a day starts with “playing this crumpled life like… Some down-on-his-luck Beethoven,” there are still “more pages left to play”! “LUNCH” is a sweet R&B pop song about making time for a midday break to reconnect with a loved one. “7PM” is a mellow soundtrack for recharging after enduring the daily grind, with lyrics that push for a moonlit dance by the Han River. The final line of both “7PM” and the mini-album is “be here with me,” which perfectly summarizes the story. BSS are ready to be the happy energy boost people need in their lives, reminding them everyone is in this together. SECOND WIND has a pick-me-up for the morning, afternoon, and night, and the “Fighting” music video has contagious positive energy that is great for any time of the day!
#31 on the “Best Music Videos of 2023” List for “Fighting” (ft. Lee Young Ji): SEVENTEEN’s usual theatrical flair is front and center in this subunit’s music video. The whole town gets in on the fun, making the premise a cross between a flash mob and an attempt to get all the citizens to turn their frowns upside-down. The members send their message through details that bring to mind a stage performance, like a car that is later revealed to be just a stationary prop. Confetti blasts, bursts of sparks that emerge from a drink, and a racetrack setting are extra fun details, even if not also intentional nods to previous SEVENTEEN videos!
Other Mentions: #85 on the “Top 100 Albums of 2023” List; #76 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2023” List for “Fighting” (ft. Lee Young Ji)
BSS’s TELEPARTY
From the “Best of January 2025” Top 20 List: TELEPARTY proves that the sequel can be better than the original! Described as a direct follow-up to SECOND WIND, the self-proclaimed “mind-readers and happiness-leaders” are back in “Fighting” form! Their mission remains spreading joy and a permission structure to not postpone pursuing dreams. They inject levity and excitement into people’s mundane days. They facilitate a date between elderly crushes, take a young office worker’s shift so she can take the rest of the day off, and knock the power out at a school so that the students (and an incredulous but grateful teacher!) can also spend the rest of the day however they please.
While BSS have had this “Don’t wait until the work is done to have fun!” mantra since day one, the TELEPARTY era adds clever twists to its implementations. In both the “How is your youth?” preview video and the “CBZ (Prime time)” music video, they urge people to join them in wearing jeans. “Cheongbaji” means “jeans” in Korean, and they use it as an abbreviation of the phrase “Youth is right now.” The wordplay adds meaning to lyrics like “Everyone go change into your CBZ”! It also adds credibility to their mission, since they do not just tell people to act like it’s Casual Friday but walk the walk in their own jeans! And they lead the crowd in a denim-filled, confetti-featuring, flash-mob-style dance! TELEPARTY and “CBZ (Prime time)” build onto and personalize BSS’s goal of spreading love and light to as many people as possible.
Further proving this era represents an improved BSS are its new musical influences: “CBZ (Prime time)” has swing jazz and country elements; B-side “Happy Alone” has an expected message about discouraging overthinking but an unexpected New Jack Swing style; and the other B-side, “Love Song,” celebrates the joys of loving and living in a new-to-them, early-aughts-inspired way.
Another Mention: On the list of artists with some of the best K-pop teasers of the past few years
DINO’s “Wait”
From the “Best of November 2023” Top 20 List: In the “Wait” music video, the delight is in the details! While DINO waits for his order number to be called, he finds numerous ways to depict the feeling that time is moving too slowly. His impatience is made palpable through serious facial expressions, group choreography that is the opposite of chill, a fast piano instrumental, and the ways his visual surroundings seem to mock him. For example, opening the blinds creates shadows that resemble the lines on a crosswalk, and that crosswalk’s lines also turn into the infamous “Loading” circle on a computer screen. That “Loading” symbol returns after DINO himself spins in a circle, one of the many times his movements are linked to other visual indicators of his inability to distract himself from how slow time is moving. Other details that emphasize how eternal waiting feels include his flower wilting and becoming his flattened bookmark. Also, the tiny dots that indicate an incoming text extend far beyond the end of his phone screen! Overall, the attention to detail for a release with such a clear-cut premise is impressive; who knew the concept of waiting could be this interesting?!
Another Mention: #41 on the “Best Music Videos of 2023” List
HOSHI’s “Spider”
#2 on the “Best Music Videos of 2021” List: HOSHI uses getting tangled in a spider’s web as a metaphor for a messy relationship, an analogy as original as the song itself. In addition to the unique message, “Spider” is a captivating single and music video thanks to HOSHI’s whispery voice and intricate choreography. He delivers a flexible, captivating performance that involves bars, strings, and paint. He uses various mediums to express his unconventional choice of symbolism. Additionally, a later scene impresses with a synchronized bar routine alongside other dancers.
Other Mentions: On the “Best of April 2021” Top 20 List; #17 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2021” List
HOSHI & Epik High’s “Screen Time”
From the “Best of November 2023” Top 20 List: “Screen Time” speaks to the strange contradictions inherent to the digital age: People have simultaneously never felt closer or farther apart. “You’re colder than I thought / From your words and happy photographs,” they remark, an acknowledgment that the version of people that is posted online can vary drastically from who they are offline. This is why there is no substitute for in-person time with a loved one: “I miss waking up to your eyes / Now I stare at them on a screen.” They view their phone time as just “trying to kill time,” something they rely on to feel less lonely. Despite the awareness that their phone time is not actually fulfilling their emotional needs, they cannot quit. In the music video, people keep checking their phones no matter what, ignoring the people around them in casual and dire circumstances alike. Even if part of them wants to try a digital detox, it is physically impossible: Rectangular light follows them everywhere, resembling their phone’s glow even when actual phones are not present. From motorcycle lights to Tablo’s empty hands, a phone-like glow lingers. The video ends with a battery life reaching zero and an abrupt time-loop restart; Hoshi is back to where he was at the beginning. Will he make the same mistakes over and over again or choose a new path?
There does seem to be a way to wriggle out of a phone addiction’s hold, since the video shows street signs marked “PAST” and “PRESENT” and the members move in the direction of the latter. But that path is far from a walk in the park, as symbolized through the sources of a tunnel’s light being just the phone-screen-type glow and cracks in the walls.
Arguably, what makes “Screen Time” the most effective are the roles Epik High and Hoshi play in the music video. The song is not a finger-wagging towards phone-addicted people; they, too, have fallen under the digital world’s spell. In other words, what could sound preachy just sounds relatable, since they do not treat themselves as above the problem.
Other Mentions: #32 on the “Best Music Videos of 2023” List; #69 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2023” List
HxW’s BEAM
From the “Best of March 2025” Top 20 List: In the “96ers” music video, HOSHI and WOOZI take “Life imitates art” to the next level! After being unwrapped and unloaded from a truck, they become a museum’s main attraction. They stay on the move while a canvas on wheels follows them. Later, WOOZI bites into an apple while standing in front of a painting of a bitten-into apple. They portray themselves as both the art and artists in more surreal ways, too. They stand in front of a painting while behind a frame for one, and they print pictures on a copy machine while standing inside of a giant one (or perhaps while shrunken down and inside a normal-size copy machine!).
The two remain confident chaos agents in the “STUPID IDIOT” vertical video, which mixes clips from a frenetic FaceTime call with a scratch-and-freeze-frame-worthy sitcom scenario, about why they ended up banned from a party and having to throw their own at home!
The other song on BEAM is “PINOCCHIO,” and although it is a tonally disjointed prelude to the house-and-bounce-inspired singles, it does reiterate how much HxW are here just to have a good time and surprise people! After all, as they say in “96ers,” they “make money but… never [mean] business,” and they don’t want to be stopped “even if [they are] overdoing it”!
JUN’s “LIMBO”
From the “Best of September 2022” Top 20 List: Drawing from a vast well of influences, JUN brings to life a vision all his own that excites as much as it surprises. Departing from the warm and fresh-faced look he has in the video for “Silent Boarding Gate,” he now wears thick eyeliner and a leather outfit, while dancing and posing amid symbolic objects. JUN’s comeback is also a complete 180 from “Silent Boarding Gate” vocally: he proves he can pull off an autotuned, alternative sound with ease, switching at unexpected moments between whispering and belting out the lyrics.
In addition to taking inspiration from the Greek myth of Narcissus and previous SEVENTEEN releases, JUN speaks volumes through his choreography. A main dance move in his routine mimics the “Limbo” children’s game, and he pushed for the inclusion of laser points in the video to add another childlike aspect to it. By adding playful details, JUN finds clever ways to merge the mature and immature. He himself expresses confusion over where on the spectrum of growing up he currently resides: while the lyrics are about seducing someone and getting them to “escape into [his] limbo,” he also indicates a lack of total control over this “limbo” (“I bite my lip / Trying to see if this is real”). While asserting he has the upper hand in a power dynamic, he secretly admits he is not so sure.
Overall, “LIMBO” leaves each variable up to interpretation, and the ambiguity is what makes this release so impressive. His music video is dark but subtly infused with lighthearted energy, his storytelling is new but also makes nods to SEVENTEEN’s previous chapters, and his lyrics are both bold and sprinkled with self-doubt. Nothing is what it seems on its surface, and perhaps that is the defining trait of the state of “LIMBO” about which he sings.
Other Mentions: #17 on the “Best Music Videos of 2022” List; #33 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2022” List
JUN’s “PSYCHO”
From the “Best of July 2023” List: JUN questions who the real freaks in this world are while unleashing his own inner freak, and he wonders which norms need to be destroyed while literally destroying things! He effectively acts out the song’s themes in subtler ways too. There is an unsettling, mad gleam in his eyes as he unleashes a maniacal laugh that makes the line between laughs and screams feel comically flimsy. His mad mind seems to control his surroundings more than anything; fires starting and other chaos ensuing seem to be of his own doing without any visible movement. He contemplates how “In this world, desires become sins / Innocence becomes assimilated and gets mocked / Don’t think it’s surprising, both you and I exist as freaks / Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re an exception.” In other words, everyone is mad here! So he decides to embrace his inner madness, choosing screaming/laughing instead of clinging to apathy, like he once did while walking on a treadmill, just going through the motions of daily life.
The final meaningful moment in the “PSYCHO” music video is when a rose and chains tumble out of a box. JUN ends in the outfit and setting he started in, and the rose’s symbolizing of escape is further tempered by the presence of the chains. JUN has freed something, but he is still constrained. He has challenged social scripts but resorted back to them at the end of the day. How much this reversal is intentional or due to forces outside of JUN’s control is left up to interpretation.
JUN shows the seismic impacts each individual can have on an environment, how easy it is to redefine go-to behaviors and attitudes, and how jumbled one’s feelings can get upon unleashing that potential.
Other Mentions: #72 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2023” List; #24 on the “Best Music Videos of 2023” List; plus, JUN’s “Silent Boarding Gate” was #29 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2021” List
JxW’s THIS MAN
From the “Best of June 2024” Top 20 List: There is a city where people discuss a popular urban legend about a mysterious man in black. No one can ever remember what he looks like or what specifically he does for them, but they all associate him with helping put them into deep sleep. He mentally transports people into dream states, so, as one person puts it, “Who wouldn’t want to go with him?” The public struggles daily to find solace in much, so sleep is their ultimate escape. They place blind faith in the man in black to make them happy. The public becomes addicted to the man’s powers, sleeping more and more often and “in essence, dying. And these same people all [wear] the same characteristic smile, one of absolute bliss.”
Someone called “the ashen-faced man” searches high and low for someone named “A.” Unable to find A, he tries to remake A with magical powers. This only hurts him in the long run, as the narrator explains: “The closer his creation [comes] to resemble the real A, the more he [deludes] himself into believing he [can] reverse the irreversible.” The ashen-faced man craves repetition, living every day the same alongside A, desperate to never worry about forgetting anything by simply making life one single, ongoing memory. He scours the city for A out of fear of change and of time’s passage, and in the mirage of a world he has constructed for himself to live in, time is indeed frozen.
There is a heated confrontation between two characters, one who vouches for putting more people to sleep and one who vouches for waking them up. Both use the same arguments for opposite points. They both acknowledge that change is an inevitable part of life, that all memories have holes in them, and that people struggle daily; life is hard, and people need a reprieve. One of them takes these thoughts as reasons to avoid life entirely, putting it all on pause and spending every day in an alternate dimension, where there is no past to fear forgetting and no “real life” struggles that apply. The other takes the opposite approach, seeing the state of the world as a reason to wake more people up, to try making reality better. In short, one advocates for the superiority of dream worlds over reality, while the other advocates the opposite.
The tension is dissolved after A appears under a ghostly sheet. There is no one beneath the sheet, letting listeners and readers interpret for themselves who A is or was. Perhaps A has always been just a figment of their imaginations. If so, should A be categorized as “real” or as something of which people only dreamed?
The story ends in a way that can be summarized in the same way that many other moments in the story can: back to where it started, yet somehow irreversibly different. The city roars back to life and the public resumes their waking lives, but something in the air has permanently shifted. Perhaps collective despair has been replaced with hope and a desire to bring elements from dream worlds into reality. After all, as the narrator puts it, “It’s a fine line between reality and fantasy. It all comes down to where you dig your heels in.” Could the public have chosen to “dig their heels in” in a way that they previously had not?
The story of “THIS MAN” is told through a fascinating set of videos that grapples with major philosophical questions. The videos prompt the audience to reflect on how unreliable memories can be, why that unreliability scares people, and what happens when one stops trying to recreate the past exactly as it was. They also turn viewers into detectives, theorizing over when a scene takes place in a dream world and when it occurs in the “real” one. The ease with which one turns into the other is another thought-provoking aspect of the story. What truly distinguishes the line between “dream” and “real” categories? THIS MAN gives a voice to different answers, characters, and perspectives, speaking to the complexity of its themes and making JxW’s debut project an impressively far-reaching endeavor.
#63 on the “Top 100 Albums of 2024” List: The soundtrack to the story of “THIS MAN” is a complementary one. JEONGHAN compares his desire for someone to “memory manipulation” and wishes he could “stay in this dream” in the R&B “Beautiful Monster.” WONWOO’s rock ballad, “Leftover,” achingly describes the mere fragments of memories that remain with him during his waking hours. The third song, a Moonbahton one called “Last night,” speaks to both characters’ goals: JEONGHAN’s goal of living in dreams and WONWOO’s goal of retrieving the memories that can bring him a fuller picture of reality. With such a detailed, complex story told visually, it makes sense to cover such a range of character traits and genres sonically too, which this duo does with flying colors.
Other Mentions: #66 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2024” List for “Last night;” #16 on the “Best Music Videos of 2024” List for “Last night;” plus, JxW are on the list of K-pop artists with some of the best teaser videos of the past few years
VERNON’s “Black Eye”
From the “Best of December 2022” Top 20 List: From the head-turning outfits to the ways a reverb naturally comes into play, VERNON’s solo pop-punk star power shines brighter than ever. Possibly unintentionally, the best part of “Black Eye” is also what gave his previous pop-punk release, “2 MINUS 1,” its “It” factor: the song ends on an ambiguous note. After several minutes of conveying a devil-may-care attitude, a sudden hesitation hits him (“Knock, knock / Is there anybody out there?”), leaving listeners wondering if he has been in denial about his true emotions up until the end or if the end is just a moment of doubt that ultimately changes nothing. How prevalent and authentic his hesitancy is to be interpreted is unclear, perhaps even to himself. Pop-punk is all about channeling conflicted feelings, and VERNON does with “Black Eye” in a way that can widely resonate.
WONWOO & MINGYU’s “Bittersweet” (ft. LeeHi)
From the “Best of May 2021” Top 20 List: Sometimes, a simple, scene-setting instrumental and lovely voices are all that are needed to make a song stand out from the rest. “Bittersweet” is a prime example, perfect for listening to on a rainy day or in a coffee shop. This song is easy listening, yet it is also deep in meaning, as the lyrics attempt to make sense of which parts of a “bittersweet” relationship are “bitter” and which are “sweet.” “How did love become love?” serves as the introductory prompt. Lyrics like this, so short yet so thought-provoking, permeate the song. In less than three minutes, everything from jealousy to a lack of openness in a relationship are addressed. At the end of the music video, there is a wholesome and very SEVENTEEN-esque plot twist that leaves viewers focused on what is “sweet” more than what has gone “bitter,” leaving anything but a bad taste in viewers’ mouths.
#39 on the “Best Music Videos of 2021” List: “Bittersweet” both captures the complexities in the song’s lyrics and brings to life an unexpected story. “Bittersweet” is a contemplation on “How did love become love,” a realization of how platonic love can be just as valid and powerful as romantic love. Long story short, in the end, MINGYU and WONWOO choose their friendship over romance. They lose their competitiveness and jealousy and instead carry out a stereotypical romance movie scene as friends instead. They learn they do not need a lover to enjoy a dramatic walk in the rain!
Another Mention: #110 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2021” List
WOOZI’s “Ruby”
From the “Best of January 2022” Top 20 List: To say it is a thrill to watch WOOZI make his solo debut is an understatement! In “Ruby,” WOOZI both strays from and stays in touch with his identity as WOOZI from SEVENTEEN. His distinct singing voice and contagious giggle are present, but his sound strays from SEVENTEEN’s in other ways. WOOZI plays around with a remarkable array of sounds and vocal filters in less than three minutes, but what is consistent is a rock sound and the rockstar wardrobe to match. Witty lyrics make this song even more entertaining, like when he requests a “Coke Zero to calm down” and realizes that won’t work because “this is red too.” WOOZI sees the world through inescapably ruby-colored lenses, and as nervous as this makes him feel, he also sings about enjoying the ride (“I’m not going back, go color me like you”). “Ruby” addresses how being in love can color everything one sees, and this feeling is brought to life effectively by WOOZI’s wit and rockstar image.
Another Mention: #62 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2022” List
THE 8’s “Hai Cheng”
From the “Best of March 2022” Top 20 List: This beautiful ballad from SEVENTEEN’s THE 8 proves his artistry expands well beyond pop songs like “Side By Side.” While “Side By Side” allows for an endearing music video to be the focus, the attention moves to THE 8’s impressive, irreplaceable voice on “Hai Cheng.” Although the song shows off his unique musical style, it also feels particularly touching given the metaphors used that also appear in SEVENTEEN’s music. The core metaphor in “Hai Cheng” is ocean waves, representing everything from choppy waters in a relationship to the color of a loved one’s eyes. He also uses the ocean in a simile: “Listening to the waves crashing onto the rocks side by side / Is like whispers in my ear / At times too careless / At times too careful / Afraid I might wake up from this dream.” Like ocean waves, references to flowers (“When blossoms bloom expressions”) and shadows (“The silhouette of the shadow”) bring to mind SEVENTEEN’s repeated usage of those same metaphors. “Hai Cheng” is both a song that lets THE 8’s solo star shine and an indirect reminder of THE 8’s irreplaceable role in SEVENTEEN.
Another Mention: #147 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2022” List
THE 8’s “Side By Side”
From the “Best of April 2021” Top 20 List: THE 8 struggles to win over a crush in a way that (possibly unintentionally) brings to mind music videos from SEVENTEEN’s early days. The storyline in the older SEVENTEEN song “Mansae” is combined with the aesthetics of the newer SEVENTEEN song “HOME;RUN” to make something brand new. This observation is not to say that “Side By Side” is a carbon copy of previous releases; THE 8 adds a charming, fresh twist to both the sounds and sights of this release. THE 8 from SEVENTEEN and THE 8 as a soloist merge in a new, impressive, and natural way.
Other Mentions: #36 on the “Best Music Videos of 2021” List; #68 on the “Top 150 Songs of 2021” List
Let me know if you’d like to see a compilation of my previous reviews of another group’s solo/subunit projects!