Picture this: you're surrounded by friends, excitedly cheering you on as you ask your crush out to a movie over text. You eagerly anticipate their reply, only to receive this in response: 🌺

Yes, a flower emoji. That's the plot of NewJeans's 'Right Now,' the B-side track in their new album, 'Supernatural.' This album marks many firsts for NewJeans and K-POP as a whole. For starters, it's NewJeans's Japanese debut: both 'Supernatural' and 'Right Now' incorporate Japanese lyrics — and in no small capacity. Whether it's Hanni singing about the woes of being in an ambiguous relationship (もう待てない - I can't wait anymore) or Haerin indirectly telling her to wait a bit longer (もう少し待って - wait a little more), both songs integrate Japanese so seamlessly you may not even notice it's there.

To KPOP fans, it's exciting to know that NewJeans's 'Supernatural' album now joins 'From Home' by NCT U, 'Walk The Line' by Enhyphen, 'Breaking Dawn' by The Boyz, and other famous songs in blending together Korean, English, and Japanese.

This album is also historic for K-POP due to the many unprecedented collaborators NewJeans enlisted for help: Takashi Murakami, Pharrell Williams, Manami, and many more helped make the album possible.

What's also new is the style of music NewJeans is experimenting with. 'Supernatural,' the title track of their new album, is their experiment with New Jack Swing, a style that's largely fallen out of popularity in K-POP in recent years. A blend of R&B and hip-hop characterizes New Jack Swing. It has a nostalgic feel that NewJeans takes to the extreme in the music video for 'Supernatural,' with many '90s references but also a slightly dystopic feel.

This is definitely the most adventurous track NewJeans has released in 2024, and if the chopped vocals at the beginning of the song don't hook you in, the snazzy percussion definitely will. Or the wistful lyrics: "golden moon, diamond stars… in a minute you and I."Want to learn about love through time? Listen to the album!

Right Now

After Hanni, the main character of ‘Right Now,’ receives the 🌺 text from her crush, the other girls try to decipher what it could mean. Right away, it's everything, everywhere, all at once. The girls all have different theories as to what the text could mean: while Danielle thinks the flower is a confession, Hyein is a bit more unsure and plays ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ with a real-life version of the flower.

If NewJeans comes across the flower in a conversation where Hanni is trying to find love, however, PowerPuff NewJeans — who made their first appearance in NewJeans's song “New Jeans” — discovers it in a magical forest as they search for ingredients for a love potion. Navigating the mysteries of love proves to be as tricky as finding their way through a magic forest that resembles the one in Alice in Wonderland.

As PowerPuff NewJeans gets distracted from their original mission, in real life, Minji theorizes that since flowers have always been symbolic of love, it means that Hanni's crush is in love with her.

All of these theories come to a halt when Hanni receives a text from her crush saying that he sent it by accident. At the same time, PowerPuff NewJeans's love potion blows up in their faces. The girls comfort Hanni as she throws the phone across the room, heartbroken, but we're ultimately left on a cliffhanger: a text bubble appears, indicating that the crush is typing, right before the music video ends.

All in all, it's a playful, curious, and utterly relatable song. The animations match how messy and magical it feels to discover love for the first time: just like Hanni, we're left in limbo sometimes, and that's a natural part of love.

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Supernatural

Though only the first part of the music video has been released, 'Supernatural' is a must-watch. It has a distinctly futuristic feel, set in a dystopian city with minimal details. Hyein, the story's main character, meets a boy she's interested in and seems to reciprocate her feelings, but unbeknownst to her, she is already dating Minji, a fellow TV star. Over the course of the video, she becomes jealousy incarnate, eventually taking the form of a bunny who dances alongside the rest of the girls.

Even though most of NewJeans' music is centered around love and romance, almost all of their music videos seem to take a negative stance on love, either displaying a pessimistic attitude towards it or presenting an unreliable potential partner. 'Supernatural,' it seems, is no exception. We'll have to wait for Part 2 to see how the story finishes, but in the meantime, give the album a listen!