With a number of Japanese releases unveiled in the last few weeks, I thought it would be nice to actually get some of these reviews out in weeks that follow the release, not months. One of these is Monsta X’s Spotlight, which happens to be their first original Japanese single since their debut in Japan last year.

As soon as we hear the first seconds of the song, it reminded me of their debut single, Trespass. It had a similar type of synth for the intro, which I thought was cool. The song is quite intense and you get that feeling from the very first second. But for a very intense feeling song, the chorus was rather weak, which is pretty ironic. The drop back into the chorus was underwhelming and it just didn’t have that element to make it memorable. If it had a more powerful drop and something that gave it a catchy touch to it, I would have been won over. All the other parts (verses and bridge) is what gave the song its definition and I pretty much liked that. I liked their contrasting sides within the verses, how they start off with the tough powerful raps and then allow the song to drop down to a slower yet smoother vocal sequence. It is a little different to what we are used to. The raps were amazing and the vocal work throughout the song was quite nice.

I like the simplistic route that they were going for when it came to the video. The most important equipment in the entire video was the spotlights, which I thought gave off a really cool effect in some sections of the video. It reminded me of BLANC7’s Yeah, which I already had liked. Clearly, this one had more money injected into the budget and this allowed it look more defined and flashy in a way to watch. This flashiness made the roughness of the song stand out.

Monsta X has been standing out recently for their performances and this just cements that idea. That intensity is definitely featured heavily throughout the song. While I did not enjoy the chorus of the song, the choreography stood out for me.

Song – 8/10
Music Video – 9/10
Performance – 9/10
Overall Rating – 8.5/10