When Taemin of SHINee comes out with new music, you always know that it is going to be something innovative and different. He’s the kind of artist that doesn’t stick too close to the norm, and frequently pushes the boundaries of gender norms through his choreography. When SM said that he would be releasing Taemin Want, I was pretty excited. It has been over a year since we have had new Taemin, and I need more!
I ordered both copies of the album from an eBay seller in the USA. This is a link to the exact one I’ve ordered. I got both copies for $33 something plus $4 shipping. Plus, with eBay, you can save a little bit of money by using the E-Bates extension on your browser, as it will save you 2% on all album purchases, which definitely adds up.
What is E-Bates?
E-Bates is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Ebates, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over 80$ back from them for purchases I was going to make anyway. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!
If you’ve never used EBates before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using EBates. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Sokoglam typically has 3%. These percentages Many other major retailers are on there as well.
Can I get it on Amazon?
Yes! You can get both copies using this link here for about $49 dollars (not as good of a deal), with free shipping if you have Amazon Prime.
If you don’t have Amazon Prime, you can get a 30-day free trial using this link here. I will not lie, the free 2-day shipping, plus all of the free music and videos are totally worth it. I also now use it for books for my Kindle Paper White too, and it is honestly a life saver. They have a program called Kindle Unlimited where you can check out 10 books at a time, read them, and put them back in the Kindle library. The program cost $7.99 a month, and you get the first 30 days for free with this link.
How do I read this post?
I recommend that you put the album on in the background, and read through it while listening to the track that I am talking about. It will help you understand what parts of the music I’m referring to when I talk about different instruments and different vocal parts. This is what I recommend for all of my song reviews.
Taemin Want Track By Track:
Want
I did already watch the music video for the album. If you want to see what I thought, you can watch it below:
So one of the many things that I love about this track is the percussive, futuristic beat. I feel like this track completely drops you into a new century. It’s different. It is powerful. More than anything, it makes you really want to move. I honestly have no idea how anyone could sit still while listening to this track!
Although Taemin is a singer, I classify him more as a performance artist. For him, it is all about creating the imagery and watching the live performance, and how you can use music to make your body move to portray a story. This track is a perfect example of that. All of the pieces of the track are woven together so tightly that this song is particularily easy to dance to and tell that story. It has an amazing contrast between accented notes, and notes that are held out that allows him to create the gorgeous, flowy shapes with his body. This track made Hokaru Sugawara’s job easy. It gave her everything she needed to work with to create the amazing choreography that she created for Taemin again.
Quite frankly, I love this track. I think it is different for Taemin but it still has a distinct Taemin flair that will get stuck in my head for months. Heck, Move still gets stuck in my head almost a year and a half later! Let’s see how long this one goes!
Artistic Groove
Okay, the first thing that I want to note about this track is that the intro to this song perfectly blends the previous track into this one, then once the beat changes for the verse, it sounds totally different. The track becomes far more staccato, but it maintains that futuristic, modern style. Honestly, that style perfectly contrasts Taemin’s voice.
Vocally, speaking, Taemin is not a power singer. His voice is soft, hushed, smooth and just a tad breathy. The tones that he uses in the instrumentation are much more sharp and add a bit more of a masculine flair to the music. Overall, this entire track is extremely sexy, with a fantastic bass guitar in the background driving the track forward. I’m not going to lie, I am sitting here, and can’t stop swaying to the beat of this track. I’m a huge fan of what he is doing thus far.
Shadow
Okay, the vocalist in the background of this track sounds like one of the Red Velvet members. If anyone knows who that is, let me know in the comments below. I must say, I love the accented strings in the background of this track. Yet again, they play gorgeously against his smooth vocals. This track is honestly fantastic. By using the strings to play these heavy accented chords, they themselves invoke that androgynous feel. Think about it, K-Nuggets, strings are not an instrument that is considered aggressively masculine. The only way to make them sound more masculine is to make them more staccato like Taemin did here.
If you can’t tell, I’m 100% obsessed with the strings in this song. Actually I’m just obsessed with this track. It has movement. It plays with legato and staccato. The strings through the whole track are phenomenal. They remind of the strings in “He’s a Pirate” from Pirates of the Caribbean. They sound incredibly sexy and driven. Taemin can be a shadow over me any day if he keeps coming out with music like this.
Truth
He’s mixing it up and has gone all ballad-y for this one! If you all have read any of my other music posts, you will know very well how I feel about ballads/ slow tempo songs. They are tricky, and very hard to impress me with. What I will say about this one is that Taemin plays it right, as someone who is a strong dancer and pretty good singer. He didn’t make it a full 100% ballad. He mixed a lot of instrumentation into the track.
By playing with the instrumentation and adding these electronic elements, he changed the track from a straight ballad into a dance/ lyrical ballad. He transformed the purpose of it. Honestly, there are some other artists that I wish would be as smart as he was on that. Now, does this mean I don’t want to hear Taemin do a full ballad? I’d still like to hear it, but at the same time, it wouldn’t feel like him. He expresses himself through his body. It’s just the way he works, and I love how he plays to that.
Never Forever
Okay, the intro to this song is not what I was expecting. The acoustic guitar wasn’t anticipated, but I love how it has a bit of a country feel to it that he blends with these more modern elements so it crosses between the two. Actually, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard someone mix a song like this before. I’m slightly obsessed with how interesting and different it is. What I love even more is how it mixes with his breathy vocals. It makes this gorgeous contrast where they perfectly highlight each other.
Once we moved into the second verse, the track really begins to showcase Taemin’s vocal range a bit more. He has a strong range and it really hasn’t been highlighted up to this point. The part that I really moved was when his voice reaches up for those high notes at the end of the chorus. It’s so clear toned and gorgeous, and I feel like us as fans don’t get to hear it as much. Heck, this track even shows off a few power notes that we really don’t get to hear Taemin sing that often. In regards to the vocals on the album, I think this track is the best out of all the ones on the album that I’ve heard thus far.
Monologue
We have a legit full ballad from Taemin! The track is almost completely stripped back of instrumentation. So what I like about this track, even though Taemin isn’t a power ballad singer like Onew or the late Jonghyun, he really pours his heart and soul into the emotion of the track which is the most important part. You can be an okay singer, but as long as you get the emotion right, the track is amazing. He gets the desperation into it. He pours his heart and soul into the track, which a lot fo artists completely miss.
Even more than that, he uses vocal harmonies and the cello to to deepen the emotion. Quite frankly, this is an absolutely gorgeous ballad, and he performs it extremely well. He knows what he can do with his voice, and he uses it to get the track to where it needs to be. I’m quite impressed with this track. Good job again, Taemin!
Want ~Outro~
So this track is mainly instrumentation, and is one of those songs that is only about a minute and a half long. I love the tuba that they have playing in this short outro and how it contrasts Taemin’s descant at the end of the song. Although it is a jump from the previous track. It somehow manages to fit. The album has this feel of pulling you out of Taemin’s world that he sucked you into for the past half hour or so. It also manages to circle the last track back into the first track so that you can listen to it on repeat in a circle.
K-Points: 973/5
One of the many things that I love about Taemin is his ability to push the norms ever so slightly so that people accept him and his music without turning a blind eye. He likes to mess with gender norms and the concept of androgyny, which are still relative rigid in many people’s eye. The best part about the whole album is that he does it in a way which feels sexy and cool, making people more likely to try the same.
This album pushed limits, and was expertly executed from start to finish. Every track was different, and showed a different side to Taemin. He worked his butt off to bring his fans something they would love, and I’m all about it. On top of all of that, every single little piece of this album was thought through from start to finish. He didn’t miss a thing, and I’m seriously impressed.
So should you get yourself a copy of this album? I think after everything that I have said so far, it is pretty dang obvious that you need this album, as it is so well done.Should you stream it? Well, you all would be idiots not to. The entire album is so well put together and thought out that I’m slightly obsessed with it, and want to delve into it and rip it apart even more.
What track off of Taemin’s mini-album was your favorite, K-Nuggets? Let me know in the comments below!
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
