With ‘Dare to Crave’, CRAVITY Is Reborn
After years off struggling to find their place in K-Pop, CRAVITY launches a thrillingly effective rebrand.
Since their debut in 2020, CRAVITY was never thought of as a group that made big swings. The nine-member boy group formed under Starship Entertainment has spent the past five years since debut sampling different, often generic, styles to tepid results: They’ve been hard-hitting rappers and they’ve performed bright, pop hits like “Groovy”. To my estimation, though, they’ve been most successful at social media, with vocalists HYEONGJUN and TAEYOUNG skillfully using TikTok to raise the group's profile more than any comeback ever did.
But this year, Starship Entertainment made a rare public disclosure that CRAVITY would undergo changes: SERIM, the group’s leader, would pass the baton to HYEONGJUN and WONJIN. The group would debut a new logo, and most importantly, their concept would change.
One week before their latest album Dare to Crave dropped, the first images of a new CRAVITY were published. In them, the boys spilled out of gooey, life-size eggs, styled in nearly see-through white outffits. In close-up images, a white, creamy substance dripped from the members’ faces or stuck to their fingers. The images were provocative and highly sexually-suggestive. They called to mind Lady Gaga’s Born This Way album campaign, when she, too, birthed herself out of an egg. But while Lady Gaga’s concept was about human sexuality, CRAVITY’s concept was about revitalization. Here, and as ALLEN raps in their lead single, CRAVITY is reborn.
The images gave CRAVITY their first real viral moment on Stan Twitter and on K-Pop Reddit. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a CRAVITY post get 200 comments,” one LUVITY, the group’s fanbase, observed on the Reddit post. What struck me looking at the photos were just how committed the members were to the concept, how easily they embodied something so discomforting and edgy. I had never imagined CRAVITY as a group that could body the avant-garde – but Dare to Crave proved that the members we saw on social media could easily surprise us artistically, too.
It is a relief, then, to find that the music is as stunning as the concept. Dare to Crave is the most cohesive work CRAVITY has ever released. The tracks are light, fun, and, yes, provocative, even when the lyrics turn to love or heartbreak. On standouts like “Swish” and “Straight Up To Heaven”, the boys finally capture the youthful-energy that makes them so likeable on social media.
Dare to Crave goes further than many K-Pop albums in breaking the wall, though, to address their rebrand. The lyrics are introspective and narrative-driven, two things that CRAVITY’s music has never been. Nearly all of the members had a hand in writing at least one track. ALLEN and SERIMM wrote the majority of the music, including the reflective opener “On My Way”, which acknowledges the change the group has undergone
“I can’t give it all up now, I can’t stop now
I may be a tiny dot
In this vast universe
But I want to make my mark”
On the title track “SET NET GO?!”, the members decide that no time is as good as any to make a change. “Go with your gut, play it like a guitar,” TAEYONG sings in the pre-chorus, before HYEONGJUN encourages, “Break free like you imagined/ Throw it all away.” The song is the most euphoric of any CRAVITY title track, and it frames the rebranding as an opportunity to have fun and to give it you rall. “Shake off the endless train of thoughts,” SERIM sings in the final chorus, “It’s the best time, right now, set, net go.”
It was a wise decision for Starship to allow the boys to write openly about the rebrand. While many companies view restructuring as something that should never be addressed in the music, CRAVITY views this new start as essential to their story. The b-side “Underdog”, written by MONSTA X’s rapper JOOHONEY, zeroes into the pain that is caused by always being overlooked. It’s a topic that JOOHNEY knows firsthand, as a rapper who the industry has never fully understood or embraced until recently.
How does constantly being undervalued and overlooked play into your psyche? CRAVITY provides deeper glimpses into this on Dare to Crave, and their answer, as heard in the title track, is to not think too much about what is at risk and instead, turn up the volume.
At the group’s first performance of “Set, Net, Go!?” on M Countdown, things seemed to coalesce. The purpose of a pop star is to transform, and at that first performance, CRAVITY looked brand new. There was a fire from the members in this performance. The determination to prove themselves was real: the choreography was immaculate, even down to their finely-tuned facial expressions. But what was most apparent was a giddy excitement from the member. As they slid into the song’s brilliantly choreographed chorus, the title track sounded like a call to keep going. “No need to hesitate,” WOOBIN sang with a ferociousness, then gave a command, “SET, NET, GO.”
At that moment, it felt like CRAVITY had re-debuted.
