[Review] WANT – Taemin (SHINee)

Finally, after a year’s wait, Taemin has finally returned to South Korea with his second mini-album and title track of the same name, WANT. His last Korean comeback was back in 2017 with the sexy Move and Day and Night. But Taemin wasn’t completely absent from the scene in the year break from his solo Korean works. In fact, he participated in SHINee’s 10-year anniversary comeback last year and also released a solo album in Japan.

The first thing that popped into my head while listening to WANT was how perfectly suited Taemin was for this track. In fact, it fits extremely well into his portfolio of songs so far. It is a powerful track but the powerfulness into explicitly apparent. Instead, it takes a subtle approach, which is similar to what Move ended up demonstrating. Want has this element of funkiness to it, which I thought was alluring. The song is described to be ‘space disco’, which I think is a new genre to really discover. His vocals are amazing in this song as they sounded flawless throughout the track. My favourite bit has to be the peak at the very end of the bridge (and the end of the second verse). It caught me off guard as it doesn’t fit the atmosphere but it left an impression on me where I ‘wanted’ more of the song.

How aesthetically pleasing is this music video? I am extremely amazed at the quality and work put into this video. The song calls for an aesthetic video and that is what we definitely got. The video seems to play on temptation, which is essentially what the song is about. We got Taemin acting all sexy and homme fatale throughout the video as if he is tempting fans with his sexiness. The inclusion of snakes in the video hints back at the temptation of Eve. The sets were elaborate and looked breathtaking, especially that final choreography scene with the big screen behind him and the dancers.

The dance takes on sexy once again. It is what Taemin does best. His movements are rather sharp when needed but smooth when it is time to be tempting, which I think was quite fitting for this entire comeback. The dance looks quite complicated yet Taemin manages to pull it off effortless, especially during the choruses, which I quite liked form the music video.

Song – 10/10
Music Video – 10/10
Performance – 10/10
Overall Rating – 10/10