NMIXX Strange Muse Review: Duo Units, Credits, Birthday Wish

NMIXX's sixth mini album is a structural bet more than a single. Six tracks, three of them duets between members who had never been paired on record. That is the first thing to say about "Strange Muse," which came out Monday at 6 p.m. KST, five months after the group's last EP.

A limit up front. This review is provisional. It is built from the tracklist, the credits, JYP Entertainment's materials and member interviews, not a full listen, so the verdicts below are about design and evidence on paper. The rating is provisional too.

My assessment is that "Strange Muse" is the group's most interesting release by design and its least proven by evidence, because half the record is duo material with no track record, even though every member now carries a credit.

The design is clear. "Birthday Wish," "Kerosene" and "RudE TaLK" are the full-group songs. Then come "Sing to the Moon" with Lily and Haewon, "Hot 'n Unbothered" with Sullyoon and Bae, and "WHIP" with Jiwoo and Kyujin, the first unit songs since the group debuted in February 2022. JYP says the album is about people becoming muses for one another in MIXXTOPIA, the group's fictional space where odd individuality counts as an asset.

The pairing idea is the right test for this group. NMIXX has sold itself on six voices that can hold a song together through abrupt turns. Splitting them into pairs removes the safety net. A duo has to carry a track alone, and a mismatched pair will be audible in a way a six-member chorus can hide.

The lead single, "Birthday Wish," is where the group's method shows. The Korea Times describes a track that pairs future house with moombahton, folds in Afro-house, drops from dance sections to a quiet piano-and-vocal passage and ends on a narrated bridge. That is four ideas in one title track. NMIXX works best when its genre-stacking serves the song, and the risk is a lead single that lists its parts without joining them. I cannot say which side "Birthday Wish" lands on without hearing it, and the album's case rests on it.

Lily has said the song's high notes took careful vocal work, and that it was her first time rapping on a title track. She also called the chorus and narration moving. That is encouraging for a section the music could easily undercut.

The credits are the album's second pressure point. Per StarNews, the three duos each hold lyric credit on their own track, Kyujin also contributed composition, and Bae helped write "RudE TaLK." That puts all six members on the writing sheet. A lyrics database lists seven names on "WHIP," including Jiwoo and Kyujin alongside outside writers and producers, and I could not confirm how that work was divided. A member credit inside a seven-person room is not the same claim as a member-written song, and the album will be judged on which one it is.

The weaker spot is the three full-group tracks. Nothing in the pre-release materials describes the sound of "Kerosene" or "RudE TaLK," which says something about where the label expects attention to go. With only three songs for the whole group, a six-member act's central strength gets half an EP.

The timing helps. NMIXX arrives on the back of its first grand prize at a music awards ceremony, won at The Fact Music Awards on Sept. 19, and the members framed the release as an effort to become artists their fans are proud of. Bae called the award encouragement, not arrival. That restraint suits a record that is mostly experiments.

For a group on its sixth mini album, the experiment is worth running. If the duos hold, "Strange Muse" becomes the record where NMIXX proved it could split and still sound like itself. If they do not, it is one lead single and five open questions.

"Strange Muse" is out now via JYP Entertainment. NMIXX closes its first world tour, "EPISODE 1: ZERO FRONTIER," with encore concerts at Inspire Arena in Incheon on Nov. 27-29.