HIGHLIGHT is back with their third mini-album, Outro. This is the group’s first comeback since Celebrate (the group’s second mini-album under the name HIGHLIGHT), which featured the title track Can Be Better. The title track for Outro is Loved and it is also the first single to not feature Doojoon, who is currently carrying out his military enlistment. I believe this is also the group’s last release for the time being as other members will be enlisting in the next year. But in the meanwhile, let’s have a look at Loved.

The song started off as your standard dance track. The start felt very ‘done-before’, leaving the start to be underwhelming to my ears. However, the song started to pick up around Junhyung’s rap. From then on, the song started to gain momentum. But my most favourite part was the chorus. While the concept was rather ‘done-before’, it was totally awesome. The kick the distorted violin gave was much needed and very attention-grabbing. The way it presented was rather bold and I liked that. It did remind me of Ribbon, which also had violins of the same nature.  The vocals were pretty good overall, with all the members doing an amazing job. I particularly like the autotuned ‘사랑했나봐’ just before the chorus. I also liked how mature it sounded, compared to their title tracks from last year which I wasn’t much of a fan of.

I liked the way the video was shot. It seems to show the actress walking through each of the member’s scenes and then the HIGHLIGHT members turning up a second too late. It doesn’t sound like a very normalised topic when it comes to Korean media but I think it was well shot. It goes hand-in-hand with the lyrics, particularly the ‘I will wait for you’ line towards the end of the song. I also like the choreography shots. Especially, the change between lack of colour to an infusion of colour, which resulted in some life and energy to the video.

The choreography, from what I can see in the music video, looks amazing. I think the chorus looked really cool and the staggering that they do with the backup dancers for the second half of the chorus was extremely smart and allowed for some aesthetics. I would like to see what else the dance will offer, so most likely I will return to update this section.

Song – 9/10
Music Video – 8/10
Performance – 8/10 (I will return to update this section)
Overall Rating – 8.5/10