One of the most popular trainees from the recent season of Produce 101 has made his solo debut, with Sixteen. Samuel Kim was undeniably one of the favourites to make it in the top 11. For unknown reasons, he only made the top 18. For those who don’t know him, Samuel Kim was previously a trainee under Pledis (before moving to his current company, Brave Entertainment) and was part of the now-disbanded duo, 1PUNCH.

The first thing I noticed when I listened to the song was the autotune. While I have expressed my dislike of autotune in the past, I am not too troubled by its usage in this song. It wasn’t as heavy or over-the-top like other songs. But using auto-tune throughout the entire song did make it more noticeable than it should have been. The song is quite good but I don’t think it was strong enough for a debut. There were parts of it which I did like but the rest of the track seemed quite neutral and standard. The chorus was quite catchy and it felt like it was the most dynamic part of the song. The way he opened the chorus and the rhythm that I got out it made it quite enjoyable. The rest of the track did fall short though, feeling quite bland and boring. Changmo’s rap was pretty good, but it did feel somewhat disjointed from the rest of the song.

The music video had some good scenes in there. But what I noticed that some details were cropped out of view because of the borders. The borders made it feel quite constricting and fast editing made everything breeze past. Overall, everything felt nice. The night scenes looked cool and the choreography scenes were awesome. The party and supermarket scenes though seemed very dry and unconvincing. I feel odd writing this (since this is his video), but I felt like the focus was a touch too much on Samuel, when it should have been with the interactions between him with the surroundings and the others in the background. For example, at the party, he threw the confetti up as the camera zoomed onto him. But the others were busy interacting with everyone else but him. So it looked a little awkward.

The choreography looks amazing. It’s not groundbreaking but it pretty good. I could only dream to be half good as he was. The first time I watched the choreography, I didn’t notice the sixteen symbol he made with his hands. But now, I notice it every single time the chorus kicks in! That, to me, was impressive.

Song – 6.5/10
Music Video – 7/10
Performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 7/10