Intro
We’ve finally reached the second part of this story. If you haven’t read the article where I discussed SF9, my favorite songs of theirs and how they became one of my favorite casual boy groups, you don’t have to, but I highly suggest you do. That way you get both sides of the story. But I will include some parts of that article here as well.
Today, we’re talking about one of my favorite boy groups at one point. And a group I STILL believe is both underrated/underappreciated, PENTAGON.
Slightly off-topic, why is it so challenging to find good group photos of them after 2022? They’re either really pale or informal (like something quickly taken backstage at Inkigayo), or they’re in units. I got this one from Kpopping. I cropped it for my thumbnail ✌🏾.
A Tale of Two Boy Groups (Part 2)
I want to take y’all back to the height of third gen Kpop, 2016. October to be exact. I was juggling my main boy groups, GOT7 (another long-awaited faves songs article), BAP, SEVENTEEN (of course), VIXX, MONSTA X, SHINee (group activities and solos), EXO, NCT 127, just to name a few. Man, looking at the list of some bigger releases in Kpop back in 2016 takes me baaaack. Truly a different time.
Anyway, one of my best friends at the time was really excited about Pentagon and their upcoming debut. I wasn’t really keeping up with these survival programs (Pentagon Maker is the show PENTAGON was formed on, Mnet always at the scene of the crime of course) and every group that debuted because I had my hands full already. But I knew about the storm brewing between Pentagon and SF9 fans with their debuts being so close to each other.
Now, it took me a bit to like “Gorilla”, but when it hit, it HIT. But that wasn’t until their first comeback, with “Can You Feel It” and when I re-listened to their debut album PENTAGON, I was obsessed and needed all the music from them. I was a stan, followed multiple update accounts and blogs on Tumblr. I was invested.
SF9’s debut song “Fanfare” didn’t impress me at the time. I like it much more now. But apart from that, it felt like a game between me and my bestie. PENTAGON would release back to back banger, and we’d wait to see what SF9 would release to fight back, and it wasn’t anything we were crazy about. SF9 caught my attention a few times during 2016-2018 before I fully became a fan. And when PENTAGON fell off for me. So let’s start with the beginning, “Gorilla”.
PENTAGON
Gorilla
“Gorilla” was a grower for me. I vaguely remember when it released, but I mostly ignored it. It wasn’t until “Can You Feel It” I really started to appreciate it. This instrumental is loud and perfect for a debut song. It’s attention grabbing, for sure. Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. It’s stuck in your brain forever.
The choreo for it is great. I love Wooseok and Yuto’s growl-y voices in the song. Yeo One and Kino’s verses are a nice mix of rap and singing. Hui and Jinho’s power vocals are great (our first introduction to them). Dawn’s nasally ass voice is here. Everything a great PENTAGON song had at the time.
I don’t come back to PENTAGON much, but it has some good stuff on it. I like “Pentagon” off PENTAGON by PENTAGON. Lmao, I had to, sorry. Their self-titled debut album has a mix of everything PENTAGON has range wise. “Lukewarm” is another upbeat full group Pop track. I think you like this style, you’ll like the next b-sides coming up. “Smile” is the only one I don’t care for, but it isn’t bad. “Organic song” and “You are” are unit tracks, and I love seeing rapline (plus Hui on Organic Song) and vocaline have their moments to shine on their own tracks.
Five Senses
Can You Feel It (감이 오지)
My favorite PENTAGON album. Period. And the only PENTAGON album I own the physical copy of. I got it while on my birthday trip to Orlando a year years ago with the same friend who convinced me to get on team PENTAGON. I meant to get others down the road, but never did, and they didn’t release anything else I really wanted a physical of 😅.
But when I tell you, this album is my girl. I mean that. I was bumpin this so much in 2016. My favorite part is “감이 오지” being sung in two different ways. Yuto’s deep ass “감이 오지” and the way Dawn sings in it in his rap. But I adore that we get to see and hear other members in this song, like Yan An and Hongseok. I love Kino kicking the song off.
I love these red band suits they wear throughout the video. I used to be a huge Yeo One girl. I guess I still kind of am. Love that he’s in the thumbnail. The styling in this video is one of my favorites for PENTAGON. Wooseok, Dawn, Kino, and Yuto used to round out my top 5. Now I’d say Shinwon once Dawn left.
But the group dynamic for me never felt like it was overwhelming when it came to following the members and learning who was who. I truly enjoyed all of them in the group.
Engine
I’m remembering how much I love PENTAGON’s instrumentals in their songs. “Engine” starts off similarly to “Can You Feel It” with its strings. I love it, though. It connects it directly to CYIF in more than just sharing an album. Perfect b-side material. This is another fun, upbeat song. A little slower in punch and pace. But you can still groove to this.
Lose Yourself (풀러)
I miss this era of Kpop I call easy or lazy Korean learning. I love when the Korean word is featured heavily in the chorus, enough to where I learn a new word easily like with “감이 오지” and now with “풀러”. My favorite way to learn Korean.
Anyway, another great b-side for this mini. Almost identical to “Engine” in sound and energy. But the horns and instrumentals here are different.
CEREMONY
Critical Beauty
So one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is this series going on with PENTAGON and their album art. I’ve talked about this with ATEEZ, but I do like when we get the same album art with different variations over time. So this time with CEREMONY we get a sliver cover. And this is my third favorite album overall.
“Critical Beauty” was technically my first comeback as what we know official call the fandom, Universe. Makes sense considering they sing, “you’re my universe” in “Pentagon”.
So the hype was real for me and I instantly loved “Critical Beauty”. Top to bottom. The music video, I thought, was great. I loved seeing a sillier side to the boys. And the song slaps. I’m surprised I did like it so quickly, considering how different the song starts off.
It’s loud and “clap your hands everybody” is our refrain. It sounds like the turn of the 20th century. Not sure where that sample is from, but you gotta give it a chance before completely turning off the song, lol. And the instrumentals here are entirely different from what we’ve been conditioned to expect from PENTAGON. This song is this first big switch up and it paid off.
I love the soft, almost whisper singing Kino and Yeo One do in the pre-chorus. Then once the chorus gets going you get another change in flow and sound and then the refrain from early makes sense. Ah, it’s soooo good. “Critical Beauty” is such a phenomenal song because there’s so much going on to catch and dissect. I see a lot of song structure built here that we’ll later see in “Shine”.
Nothing
My favorite PENTAGON b-side. I just love the “nothing but you” part and how that sounds with the instrumentals. Idk what that is, something electrical, I guess. It’s loud and passionate and catchy. I don’t really have much to say to defend it. I just think it’s neat.
Thank You (Jinho & Hui)
A boring ballad, OMG??? Nah, what y’all know about “Thank You”? This is such a beautiful song. I adore both of their vocal performances on this track. Something about Hui all over these damn songs in hindsight, I’m side eyeing, lol. We know he can write bangers. We know he’s incredibly talented. I think we all got that. But… Maybe we should have given this one to Jinho or made it a duet with Yeo One. IDK. I’m just throwing suggestions out there, lol.
DEMO_01
Like This
My favorite PENTAGON title track, and song, period. “Like This” is, vocally, such a beautiful song. The members are fantastic on this track. One of the biggest things I think PENTAGON should be known for and brought into more conversations is for their vocals. The group is loaded with amazing vocalists.
When Dawn was with the group, I felt the three members of PENTAGON’s rapline were some of the best rappers in Kpop. Dawn brings such a fun, slightly silly energy to his raps. His enunciation of certain words is another unique trait of his rap style. Wooseok and Yuto both have deeper voices, but I always felt Yuto’s smooth, cool, flow, stood out to me. Whereas is a perfect mix of both styles. Wooseok can change in tone and be silly, but he can be cool as well. PENTAGON members have a wide range.
I love that we got this refreshing sound and vibe for this new series they created with DEMO. It was perfect timing for it. We’re almost two years into the group’s debut at this point. So it was a great idea to show other sides of PENTAGON to the mainstream. So far, up to this point, we only got upbeat Pop songs.
Like with CYFI and “Critical Beauty”, I as instantly hooked. I love midtempo songs. This is like a hybrid between a power ballad and midtempo song. Visually, having them outside versus these boxed locations in the previous videos was a much-needed change. I like that inclusion as well as a change for the group.
Lyrically, it’s heavy. I love a good hopeful song. Something that encourages you to keep going and stick with it. The last like 20-30 seconds of the song with delivering his rap Yuto’s with Jinho and Hui’s harmonizing and “like thiiiiiissss” in the background is no joke, the best thing your ear will hear all week. Easily the best moments in music, period.
The Calm Before the Storm (Demo_ 02 & Positive)
Positive. Oh, the irony. Originally, I was going to put “Runaway” on this list. But I don’t like “Runaway” nearly as much as I do the other titles or b-sides on here. So that defeats the purpose of calling this a fave songs article. Up to this point, I’d say it’s my least favorite of their title tracks, but I do like it. Like, if it’s playing somewhere, I’d be okay with it. It has a bit of that PENTAGON thing that I’ll come back to later with repetition. But I have to point it out now.
Even though I wasn’t a massive fan of “Runaway” I was still excited to be a Universe and about what PENTAGON had up their shelves. But boy, nothing could prepare us for the massive hit that “Shine” would become.
So this is the point where we come back to SF9. In my SF9 article, this is the point where we reach “Now or Never” aka the jealous song.
There’s something so beautiful and crazy about this timeline and how things worked in SF9’s favor. There’s an alternate universe where PENTAGON never lost their momentum and is mentioned with BTS and SEVENTEEN when it comes to best-selling, most influential third gen boy groups, I’m sure of it.
But the fact that “Shine” released early April 2018 and by KCON LA in August 2018, things went so far left that quickly for the group is crazy. Even crazier when I just now realized “Now or Never” released a few days before KCON LA.
And here I am with two of my friends (near me) at KCON 2018 singing with PENTAGON as I referenced in the SF9 article. It’s experiences like this alone I would (in the past) highly recommend going to KCON. I had a blast, and it really was the only opportunity I had to see PENTAGON perform live.
And he’s a clip of them singing “Like This”:
Iconique™️. I have some other video clips from this show. Maybe one day I’ll combine this stuff into an article. But for this article’s purposes, I’ll include a few clips here. Wooseok ended up taking over Dawn’s part in “Shine”. Not sure if he continued to do this in future performances of “Shine” or not.
Positive, Shine, & The Fall Off
Shine
So. Let’s talk about the actual song and music video. I’ve been including the official YouTube accounts when I can, but for this video, I gotta include the 1theK link. Look at all those views!!! 255 million as of writing!! That’s crazy. Their official account has 23 million views. Not Bad.
Now Dawn, Yuto, and Wooseok are usually credited as writers on PENTAGON’s songs. They’re rappers, so that makes sense. But the real charm, the main selling point of “Shine” is Dawn. It’s the Dawn show out there. And it works perfectly for this song. I don’t think this song would have nearly been as viral if Dawn wasn’t the main lead in the song.
This didn’t bother me at the time because one, he was one of my favorite members, and two, more importantly, PENTAGON changes up who starts songs. Every so often, you get certain members more in a song than others. That’s another great thing with PENTAGON, there’s a bit of formulation going on, but they tend to switch it up enough to keep it interesting.
The piano keys are the first thing you hear when you start “Shine”. I love the fan chant for it. *piano* “PENTAGON” *more piano* “빛나리”. Oh, it’s so good. Then Dawn jumps right into it and the ball keeps rolling from there.
It’s such a fascinating song to me, like how “Critical Beauty” is. There’s so much going on, it’s so overwhelming but flows together beautifully all at once. You can help but to replay it once it ends. It’s so damn catchy. Yan An’s “my baby” part. What a time to be alive.
The music video for “Shine” is genius. I love this semi continuous shot style (I think that’s what it’s called) going on here. Giving us EXO “Call Me Baby” teas. The boys purposely dressed nerdy. And behaving in a nerdy/dorky way. Which leads me to the silly factor. “Shine” is lighthearted and a bit campy. Not serious at all. They’re serious about their crushes, but that’s about it, lol. It looked like they had a ton of fun while filming the video.
The Fall Off…
The best way I can explain the popularity of “Shine” as a PENTAGON stan is similar to Silly Bandz (to show my age). Nevertheless, they were everywhere, suddenly. Then just as quickly as they gained popularity, they disappeared overnight. That was PENTAGON and “Shine”, a blessing and a curse. We had thought they broke through the nugudom, and now were on a path to solidify themselves into a top-tier boy group. It was so good to see their hard work finally start to pay off.
While we’ve been talking about what PENTAGON as a group has been up to, a few members have had some opportunities to do things outside of PENTAGON. Hui and Dawn were a part of a group with labelmate and senior HyunA and formed the group Triple H. Dawn’s real name is Hyojong. During this time, they released one of my favorite albums of 2017, 199X. It’s wonderful.
Then in July 2018, a few months after “Shine” was released, Triple H had a comeback. And although we were joking about HyunA, Dawn, and Hui all being in a relationship during “365 Fresh” and “Retro Future”. Side note, “Show Me” is sooooo fooking good. Highly recommend off REtro Futurism. Anyway, HyunA and Dawn started having dating rumors and this hit a boiling point right around KCON LA 2018.
TLDR Kfans didn’t like that “Dawn wasn’t open about dating HyunA” or something, these fans demanded he be removed from the group, and so he left. HyunA left Cube as well, and yeah, we know how that went 🤮. This is also why he ended up changing his stage name from E’Dawn, to Dawn post Cube Ent. I’ve been referring to him as Dawn for consistency.
The removal of Dawn really pissed me off and was unsettling to me. I knew at the time it didn’t set a good precedent for Idols moving forward. And I can’t help but be triggered by RIIZE and Seunghan. Although that situation is much worse. And I didn’t think it was possible.
After seeing how quick Kfans (not all of them, but a loud enough portion) were to dispose of Dawn when Ifans didn’t care if he was dating, but still expected us to vote and help them with the success of PENTAGON domestically, didn’t sit right with me.
I remember sitting on the couch in our hotel room in LA, checking Twitter for any updates about Dawn attending KCON. KCON is three days, with the first day being the convention and the following days being convention during the day, concert at night. One of my friends asked me if there were any updates while she was still getting dressed, and I remember saying to her, “Nah, he ain’t coming.
They’re saying the boys are at the airport crying.” To which both my friends stopped what they were doing to say, “WHAT?” at the same time. Then, when we walked around the convention talking to people about PENTAGON, I remember there was a guy and his friend. They were bummed out because Dawn was their favorite member, and they were really looking forward to seeing him with the rest of the group. But little did we know they were already in the process of Dawn being removed from the group and riding the wave of “Shine” without him. “Shine” would lose its luster pretty quickly, unfortunately.
After KCON LA 2018, I was inspired to go all in on ATK and one of my first articles blogging about Kpop, solely was ranking my favorite SF9 live stage looks during “Now or Never”. And I couldn’t shake the betrayal from my fellow Universe. I was starting to drift towards other groups around this time, and PENTAGON musically were about to give me an opening for a new boy group or two to fill the void.
Nothing i can do
Positive is a pretty good album. The album opener “OFF ROAD” is great. My other fave song off this album. But “Nothing i can do” is such a great ballad. The variety AGAIN on Positive is a great showcase of what they bring to Kpop. However, things don’t get better after this.
I long blamed the failed follow-up of “Naughty Boy” as a giant part of the fall off for PENTAGON. At least with them ever becoming big in the west. Because who was that song for? I get Dawn had writing credits on this as well.
And maybe it would have done a bit better domestically if the “scandal” didn’t happen. But Ifans really weren’t checking for it. And PENTAGON stops being in discussions after Dawn’s departure. He unintentionally took the hype with him. It didn’t really translate into sales, for his music, but a piece of the group’s soul was lost when he left.
I never understood why, after “Naughty Boy”, they thought “Sha La La” was the move. We were getting back to the basics, sort of with Genie:us but soundwise, the album is all over the place. And you can tell Hui was starting to panic because then “Humph” drops as a way to regain the magic from “Shine”. And it STILL didn’t work.
By this point, WANNA ONE had come and gone and PENTAGON’s leader, who was now known as the genius composer of numerous WANNA ONE songs such as their debut song “Energetic” and “Never”, one of the songs performed during the show and later rerecorded with the official lineup, still struggled to set the ship back on course. Every time I popped back in to see how PENTAGON was doing, I’d be disappointed. And then go back to SF9, NU’EST, CIX, or one of the countless new groups newly formed from WANNA ONE and the start of 4th Gen Kpop.
But eventually, they pulled a rabbit out of a hat and made two more songs I gave a shit about, no one else did, but I did.
Universe: The Black Hall
Dr. BeBe
AWWWW SHIIIIIIIII PENTAGON IS BACK BABY!!!! 📢📢📢📢📢 Or at least that’s what it felt like. This song is flawless. They brought back everything that we love about the old PENTAGON title tracks. My favorite Wooseok rap. I think this could have been bigger if it wasn’t for the panorama. Chart wise, according to Wikipedia, did pretty well, reaching #3 on Gaon and 14th on Oricon in Japan. But nothing in the west. I think by this point ATEEZ, and Stray Kids were really starting to run things.
Which is a shame because this is such a banger. My third fourth fave title after “Like This”, “Can You Feel It”, and “Shine”. And the music video for “Dr. BeBe” is wonderful as well. There’s a deeper plot going on, and it ties “Shine” to it with the airplanes being thrown. And the album covers are cool too. Oh, and the performance version of “Dr. BeBe“? They made this for me.
Okay, last song.
The Black Hall
My favorite b-side from Universe: The Black Hall. This album is okay. There’s still some of that sound we first see/hear in Genie:us. So I hate that. But it was nice to see a glimmer of old school PENTAGON here.
How about two bonus songs because I have no idea when I will ever be able to bring these songs up again on ATK, lol.
Bonus Song: I’M A STAR & LIFT OFF
I hate Cube Entertainment so fooking much, lmao. So Kuanlin was a trainee under Cube and ended up in WANNA ONE. After the group disbanded because of their timed contract, everyone thought Kuanlin would join the upcoming Cube boy group with some other prominent trainees like Yoo Seonho, who were on Produce 101 Season 2. This never came to fruition. But at least someone at Cube was smart enough to give us this banger.
“I’M A STAR” is my favorite song from this mini album, 9801. They have songs together, but they also have solo songs too. Genius collab. I heard Kuanlin uses his English name and is a film director, love that for him.
LIFT OFF & KNNOVATION
I’ve mentioned Idol SoundCloud’s a bit in the past, but Kino’s was one of my favorite as an early adopter. “LIFT OFF” is still my favorite song of the bunch and I will continue to share it because I don’t want him to delete it 😖. And surprise surprise, Dawn is on this song as well. I have a type.
I’ve listened to a bit of Kino’s solo music, and I know he’s going on tour soon. I haven’t found any of his newer songs that have me hooked like this, but I’m hopeful.
So where are we at with PENTAGON now? Well, as of writing, five of the members have NOT renewed their contracts with Cube, a few of them are doing their military services. Hui is holding the fort down, with like a solo album and making appearances on different survival shows as a mentor (sometimes as a participant). Fortunately, the group is still a thing. So, maybe when the time is right, like a 10-year anniversary in 2026??? Hint hint. Then we’ll be ready for them.
OKAY! I’m done for real. I knew that whenever I would discuss PENTAGON, it would be one of my longest articles ever. It needed to be done. I still have love for PENTAGON and the members, they were just dealt a crappy hand. And it never helps, having fans with no boundaries running the fun for everyone else.
But it feels good getting all these thoughts finally out of my brain. I still listen to PENTAGON every once in a while. I get hyped hearing them on shuffle. But what are y’alls thoughts on PENTAGON, their music, and the members? I’m very curious.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, & BlueSky. Next up is the best songs, albums, and my wishlist for 2025. See y’all next article!
Ash💫