Don’t Call Me is the SM Entertainment K-pop boy band’s seventh album, their first since 2018’s The Story of Light—a comeback delayed while the group’s three eldest members Onew, Key, and Minho returned from serving South Korea’s mandatory military enlistment—and their second album as a quartet following the devastating suicide of member Jonghyun in 2017. In the face of unimaginable tragedy, they’ve found light, releasing their most adventurous album to date.
Opener “Don’t Call Me” is a monumental kiss-off, fitting for a second-generation K-pop group making it in a fourth generation’s world, and style-hopping abounds. There’s the ’90s R&B throwback “Marry You,” the 2000s dance pop of “CØDE,” the slap-happy bass riff of “Kiss Kiss” (featuring an Easter-egg reference to TAEYANG’s K-pop classic “Eyes, Nose, Lips”), and the Caribbean cadences of “Body Rhythm.” And to cap it off, closer “Kind” is a power ballad ripe for the current musical moment.