Chewing Gum (껌)

There is a restless, sugary energy at the heart of this debut that feels almost physically buoyant — a rubbery bassline bounces beneath synth textures borrowed from mid-80s funk and early-90s new jack swing, producing something that sounds less like a calculated comeback and more like a playground dare. The tempo is brisk without being aggressive, pushed forward by handclaps and a production palette saturated in candy-bright tones. The vocals are deliberately young and untrained-sounding, which is entirely the point: the delivery leans into the cracking, slightly breathless quality of adolescent voices rather than smoothing it away. The lyric circles around the irresistible stickiness of a first crush — the way a person lodges in your mind and simply will not leave, as persistent and sweet as gum on a shoe. There is something culturally specific here about early-era SM Entertainment's willingness to weaponize youthful aesthetics, but the song transcends concept because the production is genuinely precise in its playfulness, every sound chosen to land with a slightly rubbery impact. You reach for this on a hot afternoon, windows down, when you want to feel temporarily unbothered by anything with weight or consequence.