Top ten albums of 2015, #3: SHINee’s Married To The Music

SHINee: Married To The Music

Girls’ Generation might have been around longer than SHINee, but not much longer — SNSD debuted with “Dasi Mannan Segye (Into the new world)” in 2007, while SHINee released their first single a year later in 2008. But the boy band has managed to avoid many of the potholes that seem to be tripping up the girl group, which is mostly to say, that while the quality of SNSD’s music declined, it took a sharp nosedive after the departure of Jessica; SM Entertainment truly does not care about Girls’ Generation anymore. Maybe they always sensed a waning interest, maybe they understand how fragile a group can become when the original members are no longer intact, or maybe they sense the futility when there are so many new girl groups who are doing SNSD so much better than they can, and maybe that’s why sister group f(x) (also under SM) also got the short end of the production stick (in this case, pretty much everyone agrees that f(x) got SHINee’s leftovers; great leftovers, and yet).

Odd was released in May of this year, followed three months later by this repackaged version, Married To The Music. It’s essential that we examine MTTM, rather than Odd, because the former contains two extra songs that I simply can’t live without, particularly “SAVIOR.” This is an album that grows on you, rather than pulling you in from the beginning, the type of songs that take root and blossom over time. These are mostly jazzed-up R&B songs, deep-fried in pop, the kind that SM is famous for, with an ear worm of a 90’s house lead single. Despite all the vocal flourishes and genre influences on this album, it never feels overwhelming. Instead, it feels like just the right mix of dance, hip-hop, and five unmistakable vocals, coming together in a fun, understated declaration of what victorious staying-power sounds like.

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