Stray Kids: ROCK-STAR | REACTION [ALBUM OF THE WEEK]

[@mx.confused]

Blind Spot is also a very "real" song if you look at the lyrics. I think HAN even talked about crying or feeling sad when he listened to it. It's about the "blind spot" or the part that the fans and public don't see. About the struggles that it takes to make their music and to live this career choice. It talks about how they live in that "lightless" spot, making "treasures" and how through the struggle they hope to make wonderful music. And that, eventually, they can "meet outside the blindspot", outside that dark place. Whether they are referring to meeting the fans, or themselves, or each other is not clear however. For a pop and upbeat song, it really is quite sad. Cover Me was also a very specific vision of Hyunjin's and it's the first all member Korean song that he's written. I'm not quite as sure how this relates to him personally, but it does strike me as a personal song. The way Stray Kids writes songs is quite interesting. Sometimes songs are really the vision of only one member, but sung by all of them. Han is probably the best example of this. He is the sole writer of many Stray Kids songs and quite a few of those songs are very... Han specific. They feel personal to him, even if they are sung by everyone. Social Path was also mainly based around Chan's story, although Han and Changbin added in their own perspectives with their lyrics, and it can represent the group as a whole. That being said, Stray Kids do very much strive to represent all of their members through their music and from what we see, I would say they have a very collaborative approach to music making. Rather than like... competing to have their song or lyrics or whatever to go on the album, they just... write music. If they feel like writing something, they write it, and if they want to write something together, they write it together, and if they write something and another member wants to jump on the verse to write something, then that's often exactly what ends up happening. A lot of time they don't even write music with an intended purpose or songs that they wrote for an intended project, end up somewhere else. I used to say the only exception to this was title tracks (as in, they always wrote title tracks with the intention of making a title track for a specific album), but they just recently broke that rule, too. LALALALA was written to be a b-side on 5-STAR, but Changbin liked it so much that he wanted it to be a title track, and so it did, it became the title track for ROCK-STAR (seriously. they technically had to get company approval for that and the company apparently trusted them enough to be like "sure". i am amazed man). And other songs too have ended up all over the place. Songs written as solo tracks became group tracks, songs written for the group have been given to other artists, ect, ect. And honestly, that sort of free-form creativity is what I love most about Stray Kids. Of course sometimes the company does make it hard or prevents them from releasing certain songs (JYPE please let Chan/3RACHA release My People), but it really does seem like they just write for the purpose of creative expression, whatever comes to mind in the moment. Around GOLIVE people said that their albums were inconsistent or lacked theme, and that's because they were literally just putting whatever songs they had written onto them. Which were often a little all over the place, since they weren't having their members all write to fit one universal theme. I think, now, they have sort of found a balance between consistency and flexibility, though. This album in particular is quite... vulnerable. I know I pointed out the more sad songs (Blind Spot, Cover Me, and Social Path), but even Complex, a more aggressive song, is about the unrealistic standards people hold idols to. And they said that while 5-STAR was meant to be a standard to be evaluated (by themselves or others), ROCK-STAR was meant to be an album that represented their inner selves, the part that was beyond evaluation.

[@TheBlindSammyChan]

Wow, you really went into great detail about everything. 👍

[@usty5891]

This is the best comment I've read on KZbin.

[@mx.confused]

@@usty5891 Thank you. I could talk about Stray Kids production process for years.

[@tapioooca5182]

Social Path was written by Chan, it's about his own experiences ❤

[@Mongmong2520]

The man who wrote Tablo is Tablo from Epick High, one of the important musicians in KHIP-Hop. Looks like that's the next clue for their collaboration.

[@MindyRRD6760]

Wait!! LALALA rock version!!! Did i miss it elsewhere? Its so different, you have to check it out! 😭🙏

[@stacie1595]

Honestly, this album doesn't have a single skip for me. That being said, I adore Cover Me! And Complex has me shakin ass in my bedroom. It's Item's sassy cousin, so of course i love it.

[@Samsam-cg2op]

ALSO we need the LALALALA rock ver reaction 🤟🤟🤟

[@Samsam-cg2op]

YES LETS GO!!!!!!!!

[@naaramoya2592]

amazing album, as expected from the kids ❤‍🔥

[@jessicaalves5059]

Stray Kids is a group whose members do not have defined positions, all 8 are singers, 8 are rappers, 8 are dancers, Chan said that as everyone would fit well in whatever position they were placed in, the members have no positions , there are Skz songs that you will be able to see Lee Know rapping, Seungmin and In too (watch their Muddy Water performance, In and Seungmin rap) and often Changbin sings, the 8 members are very versatile so don't be surprised when you see that those who usually rap sing and those who usually sing rap, because they change sometimes

[@benitaaboagye9998]

If u want more vocals listening to their song “call” is very beautiful song and all 8 of them sing

[@jeannettemaldonado4628]

Comflex is my#1 on this comeback❤❤❤

[@TheBlindSammyChan]

I can’t decide my favorite between MEGAVERSE, COMFLEX, and Cover Me. ☺️

[@kimberleymonari3560]

*** How about The REMIX of "3D" featuring JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE?1 Everyone said "3D" was JT Inspired. It's supposed to DROP in a Few THANKSGIVING Hours!. It was Officially Announced by HYBE. So, it's REAL! Still Unbelievable tho, Right?

[@briannacooley6762]

Honestly, my favorite is Cover Me