GOLD

After almost a year of touring and recording without vocalist Lia, K-pop girl group ITZY was restored to a quintet in *GOLD*. The 11-track album bridges the time before Lia’s medically necessitated hiatus and after. The first half of *GOLD* offers six new tracks, including double lead singles “GOLD” and “Imaginary Friend,” while the final five songs—“BORN TO BE,” “UNTOUCHABLE,” “Mr. Vampire,” “Dynamite,” and “Escalator”—are rerecordings of songs released without Lia on ITZY’s January 2024 EP *BORN TO BE*. This time, they include all five members, and are identified as “final versions.” *GOLD*’s new tracks are a return to performance powerhouse form for ITZY. JYP Entertainment tapped two high-profile hitmakers, Ryan S. Jhun and Dem Jointz, for “GOLD,” the high-energy title track that opens the album, promising in a synchronized member chant that “day and night we beaming, blazing just like that.” Second lead single “Imaginary Friend” is more straightforward in its pop ambitions and more unique in its lyrical metaphor, comparing K-pop’s parasocial relationship to a comforting childhood imagining: “When there\'s monsters on your ceiling/I\'ll keep you safe so you can dream.” Catwalk-ready “Bad Girls R Us” returns to the swagger (“A star that will never lose/I will brighten up the night of your heart/Bounce along with the rhythm”), while “Supernatural” sings about wanting something beyond the realistic. Stray Kids’ rapper-producer Changbin, a fellow fourth-generation JYP Entertainment idol, features on and co-wrote the hip-hop B-side “VAY,” offering advice to maturing listeners: “Yesterday was yesterday and today is today/Past failures are a guide to success/Like walking up stairs/Go to the next level.” “FIVE” brings it back to the members of ITZY: “We will be we/Forget yesterday and jump/Let’s fly high in the sky with me/Fly one more time, trust in each other.” Yeji, Lia, Ryujin, Chaeryeong, and Yuna, reunited “bright like dynamite GOLD.”