They are finally back~~!! We have gotten one teaser photo for each member, one group teaser photo and the track list. The teaser photos look stunning and we got 11 tracks of Apink, so far so good except the controversy surrounding Naeun.
Apink will make their comeback on Valentine’s day 14 Feb.
The thing on everyone’s minds, Son Naeun. Apink will promote as 5 and Naeun will not be promoting with Apink which is quite disappointing. It’s been confirmed that she has been working on the title track and the MV with Apink and it seems like she has been working on the rest of the album too. IST gave impressions leading up to the comeback that Naeun would be promoting normally with Apink during the whole comeback.
IST or YG’s fault?
From my understanding Apink and IST have been planning and working for an 6-member comeback and that YG has frozen Naeun from the Apink comeback, and that IST have been changing their choreography and title track to a 5-member performance for music shows in a short time leading up to the comeback. This clearly says to me that YG is at least 90% fault here. IST Ent. have been pushing the idea of a 6-member comeback pretty hard leading up to the comeback and they should get a little heat for how they have acted. It’s super easy to be upset with IST when they are the one who has preached a comeback with OT6 Apink, but they are not the ones with power. Naeun is under YG and IST has little to none to say when it comes to what Naeun will do.
It’s most likely some business disagreement behind the scenes between IST and YG which resulted to YG pulling Naeun back from the comeback. I highly doubt that IST is going to release any information on what happened behind the scenes even if YG is possibly majority at fault. I’m not saying that YG has to agree to a deal that is bad, but to me it seems like they don’t care too much about Naeun as an Apink member and all they want is to do is a cash-grab. I don’t see the actual harm of Naeun promoting with Apink and I think that if YG really wanted Naeun to have a long and beautiful career they would let her promote with Apink with no problems instead they want to play big company with power and money acting like she has much more important things to do.
I believe that IST tried their absolute best to make it work. They are the one to lose the most from Naeun not promoting with Apink and they of course want Apink to succeed. I think they should get a semi pat on the back for having Naeun on the album and MV. We have gotten an OT6 Apink season’s greetings and one offline/online concert after Naeun’s departure – that is actually really good. After hearing the news of Naeun joining YG we should have been happy that Naeun even participated on the album.
I will take everything of OT6 Apink, because I know it will not last forever. I get an amazing feeling everytime I see an OT6 activity and I’m of course disappointed that Naeun will not promote during the comeback. If I could change it I would have done it in a heartbeat.
What are your thoughts?
The track list
We get 10 new songs + 1 already released song “Thank you”. This is incredible and the members themself have been part of the production of the album. I can’t wait to listen to this amazing album and the title track is produced by Black Eyed Pilseung who is known for producing flawless title tracks and they also did Apink’s last title track “Dumhdurum”.
HOLY MOLY – Lyrics partly by Naeun
Free & Love – Lyrics by Chorong
Just Like This – Lyrics by Namjoo
Trip – Lyrics partly by Hayoung
Dream – Lyrics and partly composed by Eunji
Thank you – Lyrics partly by Bomi
Horn Special Album
I hate the design of the album………. Plain black and white with one gold stripe in the middle, really!!?? A toddler could have done it. I have no doubts that the photos in the photobook are going to be stunning, but I can’t look at the design of the album. [Edit] They did eventually released the full design, which did look a lot better.
36 photocards if I’m not mistaken that is the most photocards an Apink album has ever had. There is not much to say about the photocards until we get to see them, but I really hope there is a set with the pink outfits they have in the teaser photo.
