I could kiss JYP right now.

I entered the K-pop scene around 2020, when the pandemic started. It’s been five years of K-pop obsession since then…but I’m telling you, I have never been so down-bad, stuck-in-my-head, sing-along-to-every-single-song obsessed with a K-pop album ever as I am with Blue Valentine.

Each song is of such high caliber and uniqueness that each carries the authority of a title-track. Each is so thoughtfully crafted, so meticulously harmonized, and so carefully designed that I feel as if I am in a museum, passing by exhibition after exhibition of gleaming diamond crowns. Each track reverberates with sound and meaning…please allow me to rant my gushing affection for each one of them below:

1. “Blue Valentine”

“You’ll always be my blue-ue-ue-ue-ue-ue valentine~”

There’s so much (juicy) irony caked into this song…staying in a toxic relationship, drawn by the love yet authorizing the hurt…hoping for improvement, yet accepting the other’s coldness…aware of the self-destruction, yet still willing to dive into it… “Blue Valentine” exudes the authentic nuance of a relationship, one where many shades of gray (and blue) layer onto each other.

2. “SPINNIN’ ON IT”

I have a challenge for you.

Find me any current, 4th-gen K-pop group–anyone, you choose–and ask them to perform “SPINNIN’ ON IT” live, no back-track, no pre-recorded vocals, no-lip singing better than NMIXX. I swear on everything I own–you will fail. Horrendously. Absolutely no one in the industry does it like NMIXX. All those high notes, stable and resonant, while dancing? To simply speak of “live singing” in their presence is to flout their musical ability–I swear, these girls are superhuman.

3. “Phoenix”

See–this is the point of MIXXPOP. Not a ton of disparate genres pastiched into one song–a ton of different sounds explored and expanded within an album, assigning each sound to a full song. “Phoenix” is so singular that I have a) never heard a K-pop song like it and b) struggle to find lone adjectives to describe it. The best I can do is addictive–the addictive repeated syllables, the addictive “ah-ah-ah-ah-ahs,” the addictive yet anti-earworm melodious verses.

4. “Reality Hurts”

I knew we were in for a damn ride from that first beat–how do you even describe that sound? Like a big bouncy ball compressing and releasing itself from the floor? It’s giving club. It’s giving keep-the-hype-up beats–it’s just so propelling and so full of momentum.

5. “RICO”

I feel RICO just listening to this song. The AP Spanish is really kicking in here–the chills down my spine when I realized I was listening to not Korean, not English, but Spanish…NMIXX’s really found their knack of finding a single syllable or sound, repeating it a jillion times, making it addictive, and stringing it throughout their work.

6. “Game Face”

These high notes are making my soul levitate–every song simply increases my enamorment with NMIXX’s singing ability. They nail all the vocal qualities in this song–the low-pitched raps, the sudden high-register jumps, the medium-range verses.

7. “PODIUM”

More Spanish? Sign me up, bro. 

I never knew the rhyming progression from podium, to sodium, to stadium, to colosseum, to pandemonium could sound so freaking satisfying. Whereas far too many K-pop groups simply hodgepodge meaningless English slang into their lyrics, NMIXX goes as far to find a rhyming progression that I, a native English speaker, never noticed before–the -iums. 

8. “Crush On You”

One of the most beautiful laid-back sweet songs I have ever heard from K-pop. It sounds like a crush–the wispy happiness of it, the dopamine rush of it, the giddy excitement of it…

9. “ADORE U”

Upon hearing this song, I desire to float up to the sky and reside among the cotton-candy pink and purple clouds. Seriously–when Haewon starts singing the chorus, I feel like I’m entering love-fantasy anime, and when Lily closes that chorus with that golden voice of hers, I feel like I’ve just reached the climax of the show, where the whole world seems to have gained a pretty pink tint…

10. “Shape of Love”

This song feels like the black-cat older-sister of Blue Valentine…again exploring nuanced toxic relationships, but this time through a much more melancholy tone, with a much more reserved but no less memorable chorus…the pitiful truths revealed by ostensibly simple lyrics, “Oh we hurt and we cry, sometimes, we smile…”

⋆˙~~~⋆˙

In other words, in this album, NMIXX finally found their melody. For far too long, they’ve been milling around in their MIXXPOP world, trying to find the one wacky concept that would propel them to stardom…but with such a vocally talented group, it was always going to be melodies and melody-centered tracks, all along, that would bring out the best of NMIXX. “Blue Valentine,” “SPINNIN’ ON IT,” and “ADORE U” highlight their vocal abilities so well… their voices captivate and sweeten with such resonant force.

They’re also finally taking MIXXPOP in a much more manageable direction. Their previous strat of stuffing a bunch of random ideas into one 3-minute song or just trying to find the most flamboyantly “different” concepts to sing about was never going to work…the former was too disorganized and the latter too unappealing. Blue Valentine’s take on MIXXPOP is so much more approachable. The idea of “MIXX” is definitely still present–“Phoenix,” “Reality Hurts,” “RICO,” and “PODIUM” are definitely genre-bending experiments–but these experimental sounds are explored in one full song instead of stuffed beside one another in a single song, giving NMIXX so much more space to experiment and giving their listeners so much more breathing room to appreciate their uniqueness. The more “conventional” songs in this album, namely, “Blue Valentine,” “SPINNIN’ ON IT,” “Crush on You,” “ADORE U,” and “Shape of Love” evidently move away from MIXXPOP significantly, which may explain their success…but I’d also argue that MIXXPOP is still present in these songs–in the form of nuance. In all of these songs, NMIXX takes a universal theme–love–and unzips its surface perceptions and explores the deep nuance within it. Why people might stay in toxic relationships. How love can be both fulfilling and hurtful. How it’s so hard to know whether you should leave or not. It’s MIXXPOP not in sound, but in idea, which I think is one of the biggest contributors to Blue Valentine’s success–they’ve taken a well-established concept, love, and found such a nuanced perspective to frame it within that their songs feel both familiar and fresh, both approachable and unique.

Whatever it was that got JYP to have these eurekas needs to keep entering JYP’s brain and keep supplying him with these eurekas. JYP can be kind of…artistically impulsive, drawn to make music that suits his taste and perspective rather than music that best suits his idols. That’s certainly admirable in an era where (most) other K-pop companies just seem hell-bent on filling their coffers. In Blue Valentine, however, he’s also showing us his capability for rationality…fusing his artistic vision with what would practically make his girls stand out the most. That formula, if he can keep using it, will make his company’s music a tour-de-force in the coming years of K-pop.

⋆˙close-out karaoke session⋆˙

YOU’LL ALWAYS BE MY BLUE-UE-UE-UE-UE-UE VALENTINE

CAUSE IT’S YOUUUUUUUUUUUU

I’M FALLING OVER AND OVER AND OVER

WHY DO I WANT YOU MOOORE??

SO DONE WITH LOVE, SO DONE WITH HURT 

SHOULD I KEEP LOVING YOU OR NOT???

‘CAUSE I~ FOCUS ONLY ON MY LI~FE

BUT THAT’S SOMETHING YOU’LL NEVER KNOW

I SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE CHASING TRUE LOVE

I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE SHAPE ANY PAIN I CAN TAKE TO LOVE YOU

I DON’T ABOUT THE SHAPE ANY NAME I CAN TAKE TO LOVE YOU

OH WE HURT AND WE CRY, SOMETIMES, WE SMILE