I travel back to Monday to review one more song, LEE JIN HYUK’s latest release. The mini-album is titled 5ight and the lead single is titled Crack, and it follows last year’s October 2021 comeback with Crtl + V (his fourth mini-album, which I did not review) and Work Work (his last promotional track).

Crack is another rock based dance track to add to the growing list of rock influenced tracks that have emerged in KPOP. But we are still in the early days of the trend, given that each artists (so far) are still able to make this trend their own and I don’t think I am anywhere near tired of it. For Crack, the uniqueness comes from the drumming. It really gave Crack an extremely dynamic and robust tenacity, especially during the bold and hyped pre-choruses. It was adrenaline pumping and I am still reeling from the excitement the drumming gives the song. Electric guitars are common in rock songs, and Crack is no exception. But as the drumming is already the bold aspect of the song, the electric guitar sits more in the background. The choruses follows on nicely from the pre-chorus, picking up the momentum and brings forth those electric guitars a bit to bring an electrifying profile to the surface of Crack. The hooks were catchy and addictive, even though I did have a laugh when I first heard the ‘I have a crack crack crack‘ hook the first time around. LEE JIN HYUK’s raspy vocals and raps were well utilized and adds a nice textural component to Crack. The bridge smooths out the instrumental, which was a neat contrast to the rest of the song. However, I do think Crack missed the opportunity to have a more substantial peak in the bridge, which (I hoped) would result in a launch back into an intensely energetic final chorus to close out the song. Similar comments can be said with the final instrumental break. It could have been so much more concentrated just to give Crack a literal high point to finish on. But overall, Crack really impressed me, with the instrumental really stealing the show for me.

As for the music video for this comeback, I thought it was fine. Not memorable, but not necessarily terrible, as well. The choreography scenes (sans the leopard print pants) had an electrifying feel to it, thanks to the flashing and spinning lights in the background. There was a lot of cracks in the video, including cracked glass, smashed windshields with cracks in them and even crackers making a crack sound at the very start/end (Hehehehe…). I am sure these serve a purpose other than puns, but I couldn’t piece together what was happening the video.

I wished the sharpness associated with the ‘crack crack crack‘ move was present throughout the choreography. If everything else (aside from the dance outro) felt a lot more snappy, I think this would have made a really cool choreography routine. But instead, it appeared a bit wishy-washy. I make the exception with the dance break outro, as that is what I am looking for and feel would have made the stage better.

Song – 8.5/10
Music Video – 7/10
Performance – 7/10
Overall Rating – 7.8/10