BOYNEXTDOOR HOME: DELUXE Review: ANIMAL and CLICHE
A repackage lives or dies on its new songs, and HOME: DELUXE has two: "ANIMAL" and "CLICHE." The other three additions were already out, or already on YouTube, before this release. My overall assessment is that BOYNEXTDOOR made a smart swing on one song and a thin album around it, even though the swing is a genuine change of sound for them.
The swing is "ANIMAL." Produced by Pop Time and Kako with Zico, it is the group's first try at electro-funk, though Kpopbio calls it electro-punk, so the genre label is unsettled. What the group and its label describe is a weighty beat under a chorus built on a repeated chant of the title, with the line "Move like animal" as its main phrase. Taesan has said the "Whop Whop" chant came from the sounds fans made at BOYNEXTDOOR's shows in the United States, and Riwoo helped build chorus choreography around animal-inspired movements. That pedigree is the argument for the song: the hook was tested in a crowd before it was recorded. A chant chorus is a bet that the room will do the work, and this group's US audience is built on live shows. If the chorus lands the way the interviews suggest, "ANIMAL" gives the group a lead single with a real identity after HOME opened at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 in June.
"CLICHE" is the second new song, and the only description available is that it is a disco track about the unexpected rush of falling in love. That is a sensible pairing with "ANIMAL": one song to shout, one to move to. The unanswered question is whether a disco track can carry a lead-single-sized moment for a group whose strongest identity is everyday-boy-next-door storytelling. It is a smaller bet, and probably the safer one.
The weakness is structural. Fourteen tracks sounds like an expansion, but the arithmetic is less generous. Nine songs are HOME itself. "Count To Love (Korean ver.)" first served as the title track of the group's second Japanese single. "Boom Boom Boom" is a Japanese digital single that already exists. "400 Years," a pop ballad, has been on the group's YouTube channel since January 2024, and only its official release is new. That leaves two songs of new music in a project sold as a full release, and the repackage cannot fix what was already argued about the original. AllMusic scored HOME 80 and called it a stylistic self-portrait with hip-hop swagger; users on Album of the Year average 60 from 130 ratings, and their written reviews call the album too short. The deluxe edition answers the length complaint on paper and only partly in substance.
I should be plain about the limit of this review. I have the tracklist, the credits, the members' own descriptions, and the outside coverage; I have not lived with these songs. What the press material captures is intent, and what it does not capture is whether the "Whop Whop" chant is as sticky on the fifth listen as the first. The verdict on "ANIMAL" is therefore a provisional one, and it is the part of this score most likely to move.
The scale of the group's momentum is the reason the bet matters. HOME was the fourth consecutive million-selling release and the sixth straight Billboard 200 entry, and a repackage with a single new chant is the cheapest way to keep that run alive. BOYNEXTDOOR deserves credit for spending the two new-song slots on a change of direction rather than on a safe copy of "ddok ddok ddok." The album around those slots is what stops this from being a stronger release.
HOME: DELUXE is out now on KOZ Entertainment. BOYNEXTDOOR's North American tour follows.
