‘The First Day & Night’ Reviewed: JUNHEE Is One of K-pop’s Most Ambitious Artists
JUNHEE spent years developing the concept for his debut album. The result is a stellar achievement that makes. a case for the singer being one of K-pop’s finest artists.
H&P Entertainment
Earlier this summer, A.C.E’s leader JUNHEE established his own agency H&P Entertainment and released the single “Supernova (00:00)”. It’s a missile of a pop song aimed at a girl who’s beautiful but always in the periphery. Yet as JUNHEE reaches the chorus, their connection becomes mythical:
Oh, but when you give me that kryptonite
It's like all the stars fall out the sky
Like an asteroid we both collide
Oh, then it's all over
“We never learn, the way we burn/ The way we fuel the fire,” he concludes in the second verse. But JUNHEE doesn’t mind the bad behavior or risk of collateral damage. Their love is cosmic, something spectacular and surely driven by fate. In fact, the danger kind of turns him on.
JUNHEE, who is thirty-one, has been releasing music since 2017 when he debuted with A.C.E. He’s one third generation’s best vocalists, even if for most of his time in the spotlight he’s been underrated. For the past eight years, his focus has been towards expanding the global reach of A.C.E – they toured North America extensively, performed a well-received set at 2024 K-Con and released several successful singles like “SAVAGE”. But JUNHEE’s solo ambitions have been building since debut. When I interviewed him a few weeks ago, he told me how he spent a long time imagining the music he could make once he could have creative control. This album comes from years of workshopping and experimentation.
The First Day & Night, which is out today and co-produced with global hitmakers PhD (Peter Wallevik, Daniel Davidsen), is a dark and ambitious pop record with a conceptual arc. The story unfolds over the course of 24 hours and each track is time stamped throughout the day. The album’s opener “Umbrella (10:00)”, which serves as the lead single, begins the story about a girl who only calls JUNHEE when it’s convenient for her. Left alone in the rain, he sings with a sense of pity,“It’s just me and my umbrella now.”
Throughout the album, JUNHEE portrays himself as a man who just can’t say no. He tries to bargain with his paramour on tracks like “Supernova” and “You should come (21:00)”, a brilliant pop track that shows him at his most seductive. “You should come over, just talk,” he sings, his voice reaching a falsetto with the final two words. “You should come over/ just dance.”
“We’re scared as shit,” he admits on “Too Bad (15:00)” and wonders if it’s better to just break things off. But this kind of relationship is intoxicating; their polarities are vexing to JUNHEE – and they also make for great lyrical fodder. On “Night (02:00)”, the album’s acoustic guitar driven closer, he admits that perhaps he’s just being used. “Was I ever in your life?” he asks. “You made me a stranger.”
Though JUNHEE explores a diverse range of music from pop to R&B, the most interesting production on The First Day & Night comes when JUNHEE leans into the drama. I love “Sugar (18:00)”, an absolutely explosive pop song that pulls from ‘80s electro-dance music. “You’re like an opium flower,” he chides his lover. “Never loved me too much/ Never trusted me too much/ You expected too much.” The sugar, his girl, doesn’t mix with his salt. If anything, the salt just gets rubbed into a wound.
Crucial to the music’s success is that JUNHEE had no interference in its creation. The First Day & Night was released under H&P Entertainment and everything, from the visual direction to the music, came from JUNHEE’s direction. I thought of this as I watched “Molt”, the first content released after he established H&P. It’s the only artistic reference JUNHEE directly makes to his time as an idol, even if there are no lines spoken in the film. In the video, JUNHEE wanders through the streets at night, shedding layers of clothing and jewelry. In a darkly lit corridor he smears his makeup as if he is shedding a piece of skin and lets out a silent scream. As the film cuts to black, he emerges, wading through waist-deep ocean waters, barefaced and dressed in white.
Watching the video, I thought of the constant grind JUNHEE was in as a member of A.C.E – the countless mini-albums, the tours, the years of training he put in to debut. In our interview, he was clear that his time in A.C.E shaped him into the artist and person he is today. “It was a period of time that helped me mature,” he told me.
“Molt” says as much, even if it is just visually. The most effective scenes are intentionally the quietest. Standing alone in the ocean, with just the sound of waves around him, JUNHEE looks at peace with himself. Maybe for the first time, I sense, he can hear himself think.
