Taste is the debut studio album by South Korean singer Haechan. Supported by the single "Crzy", it was released on September 8, 2025, by SM Entertainment through Kakao Entertainment. With Taste, Haechan sought to share his musical preferences, branching out from the work he had produced as a member of K-pop boy group NCT since 2016.
Haechan began developing the album in 2024 mainly in collaboration with songwriter and producer Deez, with additional input from SM's artists and repertoire team. Taste is primarily an R&B and soul record that also incorporates elements of dance, pop, hip-hop, and funk music, with lyrics exploring love, attraction, separation, and the artist's aspirations and struggles. On the record, Haechan explored different styles of vocal delivery.
Haechan promoted Taste with performances on South Korean music shows and fan meetings in Japan. The album topped charts, sold over 400,000 copies, and received a platinum certification in South Korea, while it entered the top five in Japan. It received positive reviews, with praise for its cohesive R&B narrative and Haechan's vocal performance; Idology listed it among the best albums of the year. Taste earned nominations at the Melon Music Awards and the Korea Grand Music Awards.
Background South Korean singer Haechan began training under SM Entertainment in 2013 and composing songs on the piano a few years later, around the age of 15, initially with the goal of becoming a soloist. After debuting in 2016 in SM's K-pop idol boy group NCT and its sub-units NCT 127 and NCT Dream, he prioritized group activities and became uncertain about whether he would ever release a solo album. However, he envisioned a potential solo debut at the age of 25, feeling that he would be better prepared to execute it properly by then. Meanwhile, Haechan kept writing songs in his free time and began asking SM's artists and repertoire (A&R) division for spare demos that he could use to practice writing top lines. While developing NCT 127's third studio album, Neo Zone (2020), he began collaborating with Deez, a singer-songwriter working at SM known as the frontrunner of South Korea's neo soul wave. Rather than joining SM's official songwriting camps, they wrote songs together during their time off. While Haechan had always been influenced by pop and R&B singer-songwriter Michael Jackson, he credited Deez with inspiring him to make his own R&B music.
Development
In 2024, Haechan informed SM of his decision to release a solo album and asked Deez to collaborate with him. His goal was to share his personal musical taste and create "good", enduring music, disregarding mainstream music. He officially began working with the A&R team to select the tracks at the end of 2024, listening to around 60-70 demos, most of which were created and sent to him by Deez. Specifically, he sought out an A&R team member who could offer a perspective that challenged his own. They focused on curating a diverse range of R&B songs and making the album's flow "natural yet dynamic".
Initially, Haechan planned to include songs that he had written with Deez, but later shifted his focus to selecting only what he felt were the best tracks, regardless of authorship. He submitted drafts of the lyrics for all tracks, but opted to select them through blind-bidding, resulting in him receiving a writing credit only on the song "Should Be". Despite early concerns from both him and the A&R team about the tracks' technical difficulty, Haechan ultimately picked mostly tracks considered vocally challenging for him. He said that Jackson's music influenced his selection of songs for the album.
Haechan received "Crzy" from Deez between May and June 2024 and immediately chose it as the lead single, feeling that the track played to his strengths and fit the vision that he had for his first stage as a soloist. With "Crzy", he wanted to move away from NCT 127's hip-hop sound to establish his own musical identity. The A&R team initially disagreed with his choice, fearing that a single musically tied to a specific era, the 2000s, wouldn't be the best move for his career. Haechan challenged them to bring him a more convincing single, but they ultimately agreed that "Crzy" would best showcase his skills in singing, rapping, and dancing, after briefly considering "Adrenaline" and "WYN?" instead.
Haechan then chose "Camera Lights" as the opener and selected "Love Beyond" and "Roll with Me" for their resemblance to Usher's "Good Kisser" and Jackson's "The Girl Is Mine" respectively. He wanted the album to feature an intermission, which Deez later suggested it be positioned to connect "Roll with Me" to "Talented", the latter being the track that had the strongest impact on Haechan upon first listen. Haechan also personally asked Deez for "Grey Rain", a track that Deez had first played for him in 2020. For "WYN?", he selected rapper Haon to feature on the track from a variety of artists suggested by the A&R team. Initially, he had also planned to include featuring artists on "Crzy" and another track, but ultimately decided against it. He said that he likely would not have featured anyone on "WYN?" as well, had he not already received the proposed verse from Haon and found it to be to his liking.
Recording
Between June–July 2025, Haechan worked with Deez as vocal director to record most of the tracks, finding Deez's style particularly suited to him. Deez challenged him to find a unique vocal identity, pushing him to move away from the tone that he had consistently used with NCT. He often altered the demos while recording to fit Haechan's style. Retrospectively, Haechan commented that, while the recording process was a struggle at times, he felt that he had improved more during the making of Taste than at any point since his debut with NCT. He noted that he had to compromise on certain tracks due to limited time and issues with his vocal condition.
Haechan anticipated that "Should Be" would be the most difficult to record, so he planned to record it last, once his voice was fully warmed up. Despite his preparation, the recording sessions for the song lasted overall more than 20 hours and left him voiceless for the next days. Similarly, he found "Love Beyond" particularly challenging as it was the first track that they tackled; when his usual technique failed, he requested the isolated stems for the first time in his career, studying it from the rhythm to the ad-libs. On "Camera Lights", he found the vocal dynamics demanding as he worked to balance its loose feel with sharp accents, particularly in the bridge, which required a glissando-like transition into a falsetto-leaning mixed voice.
For "Adrenaline", Deez prompted Haechan to explore new styles of delivery, leading to a grittier vocal performance. On "Talented", Haechan originally worked with a different director but chose to re-record it with Deez after being dissatisfied with the first result. Initially, he had struggled with the track's vocal dynamics and found it difficult to capture the emotions of the English demo when performing the final Korean lyrics in the studio. On "Grey Rain", he prioritized an emotional interpretation over technical precision. He found "Roll with Me" and "WYN?" to be the most effortless tracks to record, noting that his vocal delivery on the latter resembles the style that he uses with NCT.
Composition Taste has been described as an R&B and soul record, reminiscent of musical stylings spanning from the 1990s to the 2010s. Critic Kim Young-dae said that Taste eschewed the trendy R&B sounds of contemporary K-pop in favor of embracing earlier styles of R&B, as evidenced by the use of detailed melismas and the influences of Motown, Philadelphia soul, and early Chris Brown. The album's title refers to Haechan sharing his personal musical taste while giving fans a first taste of his identity as a soloist.
The record opens with "Camera Lights", a neo soul track that blends jazz piano and Philadelphia soul over a loose drum rhythm, as Haechan starts humming a bass riff and sings about falling for someone's charm at the burst of a camera flash. Critics noted that "Camera Lights" serves to establish the album's themes and ambitions. Driven by an acoustic guitar, "Crzy" blends R&B, pop, and dance over an "ever-changing" hip-hop funky rhythm characteristic of the early 2000s. In it, Haechan sings and raps about the seductive "push and pull" of a chance encounter with a captivating stranger. IZM Park Seung-min likened its production to that of the Neptunes on tracks such as Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You" and N.E.R.D's "She Wants to Move".
The third track, "Adrenaline", reinterprets early 2000s club-tune hip-hop and R&B, blending digital synths with drums, bass, and distorted vocals, and features Haechan rap-singing about racing through the city at night. Based on a retro-funk sound, "Love Beyond" is an R&B track featuring a tight drum rhythm in which Haechan sings about the fragility of love amidst longing for a partner. "Roll with Me" is a soul song shaped by the trumpet, Rhodes piano, and drums in which Haechan sings about momentarily putting aside hardships to focus on the time shared with a partner. Kim Young-dae described the listening experience as akin to hearing Haechan interpret a song by Stevie Wonder. An intermission serves as a stylistic bridge between the soul of "Roll with Me" and the funk of "Talented", with a brief narration that announces Haechan's readiness to reveal his talents.
"Talented" is an electro-funk song featuring a swing rhythm and bass riff, conveying the ambition to captivate audiences with one's talent. "WYN?" is a hip-hop and R&B track featuring rap verses by Haon with lyrics that explore an intense attraction towards someone. A reinterpretation of 1990s R&B and slow jam, "Should Be" depicts the conflicting emotions of a breakup, expressed through Haechan's deepened tone. Idology remarked that the track provides a release from previous musical tension, focusing on the raw vocals. "Grey Rain" is a stripped-down alternative pop-R&B track driven by an acoustic guitar that deals with the emptiness hidden behind a glamorous and busy life, reflecting on moments of loneliness and healing. Taste concludes with an outro that features Haechan returning to the studio to prepare for recording while humming the melody of "Camera Lights".
Release and promotion On August 18, 2025, SM announced that Haechan would make his solo debut with the release of his first studio album, Taste, supported by the single "Crzy". Pre-orders were opened on the same day. The following day, SM released a schedule, designed to resemble concert tickets, illustrating images and videos that would be released to promote the album throughout August and September. Between August 26 and 28, SM released three sets of teaser images titled "bitter sweet", "savory", and "mild", respectively. Haechan also promoted the album on Instagram with a series of themed photos dominated by red, black, green, and pink tones. Esquire Korea Kim Ji-hyo specifically highlighted the use of the shade #CF0058, interpreting it as a reference to Jackson's birth year, 1958.
On August 29, SM released the trailer "Taste of Sun", a cinematic metaphor for Haechan's artistic growth featuring snippets of upcoming tracks and combining 2D animation and color-to-monochrome contrasts with light-themed visuals. The narrative shows Haechan navigating a series of strange, uncontrollable events, eventually discovering the existence of his "inner god", a solar deity that had been watching him, and ultimately merging with him. Building on the themes established in "Taste of Sun", the medley video "Taste of Light", released on September 2, features snippets of five tracks and depicts Haechan's evolution by tracing his journey from being a trainee guided by a stage light to becoming the light itself.