revisiting hot sauce

[bestfrenjun]

in honour of hot sauce’s first birthday, i will be revisiting my initial thoughts about the album + re-reviewing (?) the songs and like. basically describing how i currently feel about them. maybe a little compare and contrast to glitch mode too at the end idk we’ll see how i feel

track-by-track: 

hot sauce

• if you don’t like this song… valid but why not? why don’t you enjoy fun?
• the chorus is Still grating even after a year but i don’t care the song is soooo addictive i could watch the mv over and over
• still a tad bothered that this song doesn’t have a proper bridge it just has the dance break!
• appreciative of how each chorus of this song is different !! <3
• jeno’s first 골라 ma dish changed the musical landscape as we know it

diggity

• the damn sirens in the second chorus make it impossible to listen to while in a car
• this song is really fun but i never Want to listen to it like it’s a skip for me when i’m actively listening to music and not passively playing it for accompaniment

dive into you:

• i think… after a year… this song is boring I’M SORRY NATASHA
• but i’m a disliker of many Purely Feel-Good songs and this is one of them even though the water-imagery of this song is cute and the performances were cute
• also the ficdom ruined this song for me
• that all said i’m glad This was the b-side promo along with hot sauce instead of diggity. i am so glad.

my youth:

• this is chenle’s song he is mixed sooo forwardly in the chorus (w/ highlights from haechan)
• i still believe the production is very bridgerton strings-cover-of-a-pop-song-esque except this is actually an original pop song
• why am i JUST noticing jeno in the beginning of the second chorus
• renjun and jaemin singing 더욱더 소중한가 봐 together <3
• the best part about this chorus are the added layers for each member
• i feel like someone is under haechan in this part “나의 전부였던 너 / 늘 함께한 우리 둘”

rocket:

• originally my second-favourite song on the album!
• another song where i hear chenle the most on the chorus
• JAEMIN SAYS “STAR WARS”?
• i always imagined the markno “boom boom 터트려 난 all night zoom zoom 쉴 새 없는 spotlight” part having cute choreo
• interesting how this song’s bridge is followed by the post-hook

countdown:

• i think renjun sounds sexy in this song sorry
• haechan’s first pre-chorus “꿈결 속에 아른대던 장면들이 / 불길처럼 눈앞에 확 번질 테니” is one of my favourite parts of his like. ever. this song has so many good individual member parts and that’s why i’m still countdown > saturday drip in the battle of full-album bangers
• BEST RAP SECTION EVER
• jaemin’s part is so good. and the way mark transitions into his verse ? GOD TIER!

anl:

• if this song had a vibe it would be that of a teen getting-together fic
• not me reading the lyrics for the first time and realizing jeno says “we can paint all day” not “we can bang all day”
• yeah i give it to you every night
• the translation of this song is so cute we love sky and star imagery
• we should’ve gotten a behind recording for this song
• mark’s “i’m yours and you are mine” layered underneath jisung in the bridge is <33 ahhhhhh heart-swelling

irreplaceable

• i know haechan sounds amazing. but i hate this song
• ok hate is a strong word but i think it is very Tacky and Corny and it sits with drive/minicar in my books. so i dislike it. even though the horns should appeal to me on a normal day
• it’s the fucking cowbell i can hear it
• the voice modulation that starts in the background of the second verse also sucks and i hate it
• mark’s “yeah we bout to hug and kiss” is hilarious

be there for you

• if i never had to listen to this song again in my life i would be a happier person
• they all sound beautiful <3 and i’m glad renjun can flaunt his vocal skills but this is so boring to meeeee

rainbow

• 7dream and their saga of manipulation-song album enders… UGH
• renjun in the last chorus <3 that is all

what i said about the album in 2021:

thanks to technology (ie my twitter archive + imessages), i was able to find out what i said about hot sauce when it released. below are some screenshots:

about countdown

and i was correct? it’s the pussy part of the album! why didn’t they ever perform it! (i know why but please… please perform the ass-shakers…)

SHINEE’S LUCIFER………. idk what i was hearing but i don’t hear that anymore LMAO. but the early 00s music is still true

about the album

half-truths were stated… i Do think that the album gets muddled after countdown but maybe i just love that song So Much and dislike all the ones following it So Much that it all pales ;dhfjhfsidj i remember at one point i tried to re-order the tracklist and i couldn’t do it. idk

the part about my youth tho: idk who wrote that! certainly not 2022 me, who loves my youth <3

i was right i did fall in love w/ it after the third full listen LOL

my 2021 album ranking

accurate and Still correct! my only change would be swapping rocket and hot sauce

thoughts about hot sauce in 2022:

IDK… IDK !!! in my last album post i said that i prefer the moments on hot sauce more than the listening experience of glitch mode but now i want to take it back… grass-is-always-greener geminisms. the sonic structure of the tracklist is basically the same between glitch mode and hot sauce. we have:

1. title track + promotional b-side (hot sauce-diggity-dive into you, fire truck-glitch mode-arcade)
2. mellow second quarter (my youth, it’s yours-teddy bear-replay)
3. album climax (rocket-countdown, saturday drip)
4. throwback-y descent (anl-irreplaceable, better than gold-drive)
5. The Ballad (be there for you, never goodbye)
6. emotional manipulation track (rainbow, rewind)

this structure is found in nearly all sm albums, even the old dream ones (reload literally follows this formula, except puzzle piece was a hybrid of 5 and 6). i point out this parallel between hs and gm because it makes comparing the two Very Easy. do i prefer glimo because it’s a Better Album To Me, or is it just the recency effect? knowing that a good chunk of hot sauce was produced by moonshine makes my comments from last year Make Sense, too: the album sounds sames-y bc the credits behind the tracks are similar. the same can’t be said about glimo, which does a better job at switching between the six emotional waves i listed.

on hot sauce itself: this is my favourite nct dream title track (however go is my #1 promotional track). it’s difficult to separate the music from The Experience Of Its Time, especially for me as like… someone with such strong emotional responses to music and the memories connected to it. i thought last year that they could Do Better than hot sauce, and they did! but hot sauce is still suuuper solid on its own and a great segway between what Was the 7dream sound (we go up) and their current music, although the homogenization of the nct sound is still a problem.