South Korea’s third-generation K-Pop Girl Group consisting of five members, Joy, Irene, Seulgi, and Wendy who debuted back in 2014 with their single, ‘Happiness.’ The fifth member, Yeri, made her debut back in 2015, and Red Velvet released their third album, ‘Chill Kill’ as of November 13th, 2023.

Chill Kill’s Album consists of 10 tracks: 

• ‘Chill Kill’

• ‘Knock Knock (Who’s There?)’

• ‘Underwater’

• ‘Will I Ever See You Again?’

• ‘Nightmare’

• ‘Iced Coffee’

• ‘One Kiss’

• ‘Bulldozer’

• ‘Wings’

• ‘Scenery’

In an interview between former member Joy and Spotify Korea, Joy discusses the meaning behind the album title. Joy states in the interview: “The term ‘Chill Kill’ refers to a situation or a person who disrupts the silence.” On a YouTube live stream, former member Wendy adds:  “We tried our best to express the two key words of our album, hope and tragedy.”

Starting Red Velvet’s lead single, ‘Chill Kill’ starts off with a darker and quiet rhythm that begins turning deeper into the song with deeper tone voices that get louder. Which makes the rhythm less darker and rather more bright and happier. Instead of a darker concept, it turns to an upbeat song. ‘Chill Kill’ is a song showing those mixed feelings due to the chorus switching from dark to a more upbeat rhythm. While ‘Knock Knock (Who’s There?)’ shows the complete opposite. It shows a dark concept for the album. With its haunting and slow rhythm that becomes louder onto the song with their voices pitching higher as the chorus goes. The song interprets a more mysterious and uneasy feeling of fright in the song from both the haunting vocals and the rhythm, almost similar to ‘Nightmare.’ ‘Bulldozer’ has another similar type of dark concept like ‘Knock Knock (Who’s There?)’ and ‘Nightmare. However, this rhythm is more aggressive than Red Velvet’s soft and affectionate track  ‘One Kiss.’ 

While ‘Underwater,’ ‘Iced Coffee,’ and ‘Will I Ever See You Again?’ keep a different rhythm in this album. These voices in the songs sound angelic and are softer rather than a louder and deep tone. This rhythm is creative with a mix of different types of soft instruments, such as piano. The rhythm is completely far off those dark concepts and leaning more towards an ethereal concept. Ending off with ‘Scenery,’ a soft and heavenly sounding song without any heavy rhythm which closes up the album with a very gentle chorus. 

For the most part, this album portrays “tragedy and hope” vividly. How these different songs each have their different choruses, some being aggressive and deep. Whereas others are being soft and angelic represent tragedy and how different those terms are from each other. I believe that the main song that portrays that is the lead single, ‘Chill Kill’ because of how it switches from dark to upbeat, which contrasts how different these songs in the album are from each other.