ONEW'S ANIMALS
The New Wave in Kpop is All Grown Up
Onew of SHINee is exploding in a more graceful but no less powerful way than a sun. I’m in happy awe. Success is nice. Being an honest, dedicated artist is better. And when somebody has this combination of gentleness and steel, it’s rare but inevitable.
Like the entire group, Onew is setting a fresh path for idols who are old enough (we are talking over thirty) to have this level of experience and aren’t fading out. They’re freaking setting the place on fire, one flame at a time. This isn’t your ordinary reinvention. It’s a New Wave in Kpop, by adults, for adults. Kids welcome, of course. Everybody is welcome. That’s the difference.
While the big companies like Hybe and SM are hustling up the next generation of boy bands and girl bands, former generations are refusing to go gently into any good night. They're young by earthly, if not Kpop standards, have experiences and insight to bring to the table, and haven't lost any of their appeal unless you are only into anime style boys.
It happens when artists leave their original companies and form their own, or join totally differently oriented ones. It's when they start owning their material, their ideas, and being as inventive as they were always capable of, just with the knots untied. I'm not dissing the original Kpop business model. It brought us talent and inventiveness and lovely things like we've never seen before, sharing more than was probably wise of their artists, but also causing a deep attachment that I've only see in Kpop. It can't be everything, though, when it's focussed so intently on youth, even though coming of age is when music becomes a part of your identity.
As we grow up, if we loved music we always will. For the more adventurous of us, music is always something to look forward to, not just back at. And then there is the sometimes awful, sometimes mediocre, sometimes glorious present. Lots of fans are over thirty. But music interesting enough for experienced ears gets harder to find and harder to share. Kpop is rich with it.
Artists like SHINee are finding themselves ready, willing and able to deliver fresh, exciting and attractive new content. Only those focussed on the youngest looks and the online Kpop fandolotry over the music or content are completely indifferent. Because the songs are good and great. The performances are hard core. And the attitude of these pros is so relaxed and honest, relatively speaking, it's a huge relief. They are announcing the intention to be everything they can for as long as they can.
All SHINee's members are “glowing up.” Taemin is coming off a brilliant world tour, with some of the most powerful stages and passionate performances to date. Key delivered with Pleasure Shop and has announced more to come, as well as his usual appearances in everything from variety shows to reality tv, his quiet mentoring of younger industry artists and his deep reach via marketing into everyone's pockets and hearts. Minho is finally stepping out and admitting he’s a singer as well as an idol, an actor and a gym rat. If Jonghyun was still with us, he'd be lighting up the night sky and getting numbers. I actually suspect his day is still to come via the released and unreleased material already out there and ready to be repackages. SHINee's latest single POET ARTIST, which includes Jonghyun's writing and his voice, is a hint of what could come.
Just yesterday, Onew, SHINee's Lee Jinki, after weeks of Dadaesque teasers, shows up with a new album, PERCENT, and a new single, Animals. The music video tells a story of Onew, a Homo Sapiens, getting on a subway train full of ordinary passengers who show their animal natures in the smallest of things. There’s a guy drinking carrot juice whose rabbit ears come and go. There’s a blond bobbed woman with tiger stripes briefly appearing on her neck. She eyes the rabbit briefly before her markings fade away. And there’s a man with long dark hair and a tail, a wolf in human's clothing. His exchange of looks with our Onew tells us they are colleagues of a sort. Onew, bright eyed and, you imagine, bushy tailed, walks around the train tacking up pictures of the moon and preparing the train for a new destination. The dream is not far away, the posters read, leave yourself to the ocean as long as you like."
The next thing you know, Onew's hijacks the train and it heads straight into the glow of the moon. In the chorus, Onew advises us, "Turn on the moonlight, you and I, from now on we are animals." These are, for my money, some of the best lyrics I've ever heard in a Kpop song. And almost every line is half in Korean, half in English, which is a brilliant development. "There's no need to say anything, your eyes, just by glancing at them, I can tell you are animals." Instead of the usual style choreography, Onew choose a joyful, free dance with his secretly furry friends. Once on what seems to be a train station on the moon, a variety of characters in black and white office garb cut loose, led by him. The song advises we come to terms with our animal nature, and celebrating it happily. This isn’t the typical horror or decadence, it’s very Onew, very fun, and frankly, a breath of fresh air.
The single is immaculate, each section holding. It’s own, with a music video that is as charming as Maurice Sendak on soju. Onew has never looked better or happier, and his vitality doesn't just drive the song, it drives every version he's offered to date, of which I count three. Or is it four? Live performances are every bit as good as the MV, despite the lack of choreographical insanity, better, in a way, because you can see and hear Onew bringing it home in one take and several different concepts.
If it's successful, and how can it not be, Animals, like those songs on Taemin's debut independent album, like SHINee's POET /ARTIST, like Key's personal imprimatur on everything he sings or produces or markets, like Minho's newly public presence celebrating doing what he wants, marks the beginning, understated or not, of a revolution. We're growing up. Kpop is growing up. And our heroes, SHINee are growing up with us.
Leave no man, woman or child behind. And hell yes, bring the animals.
Pat Troise
July 16 2025