Night of the boys next door

Kang Myungseok: The trailer film for BOYNEXTDOOR’s first release, WHO!, which served to announce their debut to the world, opens with a wide view of a residential neighborhood aglow in dazzling sunlight. Surely there are some boys living just next door. This marked the beginning of BOYNEXTDOOR—but it would seem that something has happened to the boys. The trailer film for WHY.., the group’s new album, opens with a shot of a suitcase as it makes its way through a dark, narrow passage. By the time it turns up at an airport baggage claim, it’s clear it’s had a run-in with some fire, giving the impression something must have happened since we first saw it. And the same can be said for the members of BOYNEXTDOOR. In that first trailer for WHO!, we just sat and watched as the members hang out in the daytime and party at night, the only concern on their minds being what their love interests might be feeling about them. Fast forward to the trailer for WHY.., and they’re standing alone in the street, completely drenched, and sometimes leaning out an apartment window looking as lonely as can be. WHO! has three singles, and one of them, “One and Only,” opens—in the music video and in live performances—with the boys coming through a door and showing off what they are made of. But then, in the WHY.. trailer, TAESAN—the last member of the group on-screen—totally ignores the singed suitcase on the doorstep and shuts the door. And once he does, the night ceases to be a time for partying. Other than a few short, dreamlike scenes here and there, the boys live pedestrian lives alone and isolated from each other and the world.

When the boys sing, “Usually I got no secrets / But I keep on lying,” on WHY..’s opening track, “Crying,” the reason behind their change becomes obvious. Once bright as the afternoon sun, these boys now harbor a dark little secret. Though they try not to show it, it couldn’t be more obvious that they’re hiding something. After “Crying” comes “But Sometimes”: “I widened my shoulders so you could lean on me, but now / They just make it hard to move through the metro.” Here, the boys next door have apparently broken up with whoever they were romancing in WHO! And, like the words, “Forget it, I’m out,” appearing on-screen in the middle of WHY..’s concept film, DAZED and confused—also released before the album—show, the breakup has truly taken its toll. You see it when one of the boys walks through an amusement park holding two ice creams, with no one to share the second one with. Soon, the night comes, and as upbeat rock music plays, the camera passes over the lonely faces of the BOYNEXTDOOR members. Whereas they were hanging out in the WHO! trailer and trying to figure out how their love interests feel about them, in DAZED and confused, they just drop a handful of confetti lifelessly to the ground and watch as it settles in silence. The boys don a completely different vibe after the breakup.

WHY.. isn’t concerned with the reason behind the breakup. Instead, the album focuses on how and why the boys have changed in the face of the breakup and the emotions they experience as a result, all told in first person. They’re still cut out for life under the sun, but now they have the bandwidth to also express feelings of loneliness. Their gatherings have taken on a new meaning as well—they don’t get together just to share their romantic escapades; it helps them keep the loneliness at bay. Despite so much of the WHY.. trailer showing the boys in isolation, the group shots suggest they have the power to overcome that loneliness and the sadness that swallows them up after a breakup—but only when they’re all together. The tracks that make up WHY.. stand in contrast to WHO!’s largely upbeat mood, whether it’s the boys’ low murmuring to the melody in “Crying,” how “But Sometimes” turns from cheerful reggae to heady rock, or the way a person can change after a breakup and the emptiness that creeps up inside as explored in “ABCDLOVE.” The two releases do share some commonalities—both WHO! and WHY.. are easy to listen to, and the rhythm flows effortlessly through both—but this new version of the “boys next door” also delves into the darkness that lurks in a deep corner of the mind and can spread outward like ink spilled on paper. And then there’s parts where it just rocks, like the chorus to “But Sometimes.” In other words, the once happy-go-lucky boys have taken a step forward into something new. They’re saying: we’re more complicated than you think, so get ready to be curious about WHO we are and WHY we act the way we do.