REVIEW Album Review: WayV - "Take Over The Moon"

Polaris_Tae

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ALBUM REVIEW: WAYV -"TAKE OVER THE MOON”
Written by: Polaris_Tae
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WayV or 威神V (WēiShén V) is a Chinese idol group under the management of Label V, an SM Entertainment established Chinese label solely responsible for the management of the group. WayV debuted on the 17th of January, 2019, with the single album "The Vision" and the title track, "Regular", a Chinese remake of the hit NCT127 song of the same name. The group has seven members, six of whom are Chinese, with member Ten being the sole Thai member of the group, despite having Chinese ancestry.


The group then directly followed up with their first mini-album, "Take Off" during the first half of 2019.
WayV is largely pop-inspired with hints of technological influences, which can be seen in their latest mini-album "Take Over The Moon", which largely draws upon the Sci-Fi interstellar space opera concept.


WayV, along with NEXT, is probably one of my favourite Chinese boy groups. However, unlike NEXT, the group does not have its headquarters in China but live and practice within SM's main headquarters in South Korea despite being a Chinese group and having their target audience within Mainland China. Although this gives the group access to more SM Entertainment resources and contact with other SM artists, along with the greater NCT group, it somewhat alienates them from the larger Chinese entertainment industry and their target audience. This is because the group has to constantly travel back and forth between countries despite almost all of the group's schedules, along with the majority of the members, hailing from China. Therefore, for the group to gain traction and get off the ground to become a sustainable product for SM and Label V in the foreseeable future, SM has to commit to basing WayV within Mainland China and giving the members individual schedules within the country to gain a fan base. The Chinese idol industry does not heavily rely on group activities, but rather on individual activities to bring popularity to the larger group which can be seen in senior idol groups such as NEXT & HJSN101.


"Take Over The Moon" is the groups second EP, and further establishes the distinct sound that WayV has established separate to the Korean sub-groups and gives us a conceptually consistent release where almost all of the songs across the mini-album are interconnected to expand the space opera driven concept that is "Take Over The Moon".



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'Moonwalk'



"Moonwalk" is the lead single from "Take Over the Moon" and serves as the grand opening for the album, cementing WayV's position of having no bad title tracks. The song is heavily concentrated around the theme of high fantasy and plays like a story of a space opera, filled to the brim with biblical references proclaiming themselves as the founders of a new civilization. Similarly, both the instrumentals and music video also touch on the sci-fi elements explored in the lyrics. The instrumental is an experimental trap piece combined with a classical orchestral addition that shouldn't really fit in the song, yet somehow does.


The song opens on a light fluttering of piano chords followed by a heavy orchestral transition that welcomes us to the masterpiece that is this album and promises to be an amazing experience. I found the line distribution in this song to be far greater than their previous release "Take Off". The main vocalists all received an almost equal amount of time, and Winwin, despite still being shafted in terms of vocal distribution, still managed to give us a great delivery of the lines he was given. This gives me hope that in the future when he is given a more substantial amount of lines within a song, he will pull it off flawlessly. The group yet again has managed to pull off flawless vocal harmonization that has become synonymous with their sound, as demonstrated in "Take Off" and will leave the listener in awe time and time again.


8/10




'Yeah Yeah Yeah'



"Yeah Yeah Yeah" is a trap heavy experimental track about the appreciation that the group has for the support that the fans have given them. Comparing the love and support that the fans give them to a "Sunrise in a dark night". They also express their anxiety and uneasiness when it comes to performing on stage in front of a "screaming sea of people". Despite the expressive nature of the lyrics, I found the song's hook to be far too repetitive and lacked any diversity within the composition.


The song is dominated by heavy synths that sound nothing like their previous releases, thus somewhat feeling out of place on the album. The vocals within the song, when compared, are much more simple and the rapping within the song, specifically Yangyang's first verse, mainly relies on the triplet flow that adds a further dimension to the track, that largely relies on the instrumental, a consistently looping EDM hook to draw in the listener. However, the addition of these elements into "Yeah Yeah Yeah" will having you screaming "Yeah Yeah Yeah" and pressing that replay button on Spotify!


6/10


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'Love Talk'



The song opens with Ten proclaiming to the audience, "I can hear it callin' / Loving the way you wanna talk / Touch me tease me feel me up". Giving you a feeling that the song will have some strong sexual themes. However, the lyrics -- at least the Chinese lyrics -- show that this is not the case. "Love Talk" portrays itself as a sensual song about longing for someone that you are unable to connect with due to the difference in language and culture. This is especially relevant to WayV, as the group contains members not just from Mainland China, but Thailand and Germany as well -- in the form of Ten & Yangyang -- and therefore extremely relate to the topic of the song, as all of the members were trained within Korea, and despite not knowing the language, had to adapt and learn to communicate to the Korean artists within their initial company (SM Entertainment).


The song is heavy on the synth-pop RnB mixture that blends perfectly with each of the members' vocals. It is absolutely stunning over the multiple layered vocals within the chorus that
WayV often incorporates into their songs. I thought that the rap section of the song did not feel out of place, but rather accomplished its aim of breaking up the verses and allowing each of the members to shine in their respective verses. The song, like the ones preceding it, portray multiple references surrounding the celestial and sci-fi concept, such as the aspect of traversing the galaxy as a pair of silent meteors trying to discover the key to their heart and cherishing the memories that they make together. It stays consistent with the thematic elements portrayed within the mini-album, which helps to add structure and cohesiveness to the album's overall production.

The group also released an English version of "Love Talk", which in my opinion, did not suffer from the faults that English releases from non-English speakers often suffer from (i.e. improper grammatical structure, poor pronunciation) and was a great addition to an already amazing song.


9/10




'King of Hearts'



"King of Hearts" is the first of two unit songs on the album and is a rap-line track. The members involved are; Lucas, Hendery, Yangyang & Winwin, and is an alternative RnB straightforward song that addresses the longing they feel towards their love interest and their confession to said person. One interesting thing to note about "King of Hearts", and the following track, "Face to Face", is the participation of bot Yangyang and Hendery in writing the lyrics for their verses in both tracks, despite having just debuted in WayV in 2019. As a result, we can find several intentional references that the pair have made to sit as a parallel to other songs contained on "Take Over The Moon". Yangyang's verse, in particular, is particularly evident in this technique: "face to face openly connecting, face to face heart beats faster", which connects to the following song in the album "Face To Face", which incidentally shares similar themes with "King of Hearts".


One of the things that I found most enjoyable about this song -- as well as the extended album -- was that Winwin, after years of either receiving scrap for lines or having his voice overly edited to the point it is unrecognizable, has finally come into his own to display both his talents and vocal ability following his addition to WayV. It's only a shame that it took almost four years and (unofficially) leaving NCT127 for this to actually happen.


8/10


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'Face To Face'



"Face To Face" is the only pure ballad on the album and is arguably one of the better songs in terms of vocal layering in the group's short discography which is by far the best aspect of the song. The song begins with Xiaojun expressing "Adding a smiley face [emoji], wanting to conceal your disappointment / If there's nothing wrong, then why is your [text] message so short?" The song displays their wish to comfort the subject even if they don't directly express that they're feeling down.


The song acts as the second unit song, containing the main vocal line of
Kun, Ten, and Xiaojun. The song tells the story about trying to comfort a loved one. The instrumental is far more subdued than their other B-sides, which allows each of the member's vocals to shine through and present themselves as the main focus of the song, rather than the music drowning them out, and is overall a great addition to the groups' music catalogue.

9.5/10




'We Go Nanana'



"We Go Nanana" is the final song in the album and plays like the ending credits to the song space opera that is WayV's "Take Over The Moon". The song focuses on the happiness that the group has found upon stumbling across the listener and being free of their worries. This makes it perfect as the final song since it helps to end the album on a bright note.


I found that unlike "Yeah Yeah Yeah", the constant repetition of "We gonna get na-na-na-na-na-na-na" did not sound too repetitive but rather added to the song by giving it an extremely addictive hook, and therefore succeeded where "Yeah Yeah Yeah" had failed. My favourite aspect of the song is the first pre-chorus where the vocalists emphasize certain aspects of their vocals as they gradually increase their volume as the volume of the instrumental gets
even more intense.


9/10


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In conclusion, WayV's "Take Over The Moon" is a solid entry for a group that is still establishing itself within the Chinese pop industry and will continue to be one of my favourite releases from 2019. I look forward to their future releases, where I hope to see them further establish themselves as artists.


_________________________________________________

Artistic Creativity: 10/10
Vocal Quality: 9/10
Music: 8.25/10


9.5/10
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PROOFREAD BY: @Dragon of the West
GRAPHICS BY: @Aerith
 
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Dragon of the West

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Absolutely loved this album and in particular - Moonwalk, Face to Face and ofc, the mother of all WayV b-sides, Love Talk! Great work on the review Polaris!

Excited for the full album in a few days!
 

Polaris_Tae

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Absolutely loved this album and in particular - Moonwalk, Face to Face and ofc, the mother of all WayV b-sides, Love Talk! Great work on the review Polaris!

Excited for the full album in a few days!


Literally a work of art. One of my favourite cpop group releases of 2019. I was absolutely amazed by how cohesive the album structure was across the entire album and how it stuck to a single concept instead of being all over the place. I expect their next album will be just as great!

:palove::palove::palove:
 
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