It's been 8 years since Pentagon released Positive and its iconic title track Shine!

Since today is the 8th anniversary of Positive album and people enjoyed my previous BTOB post, I wanted to share my appreciation and some facts behind its release. As a warning, the post is very long and I cut down a bunch of stuff, but there's a lot I wanted to say, lol.

Before anything, I want to remind that Pentagon performed together this year for Hanteo Music Awards, where they received an award for their career, and they released a fun Shine (HMA 2026 ver.) dance practice video with live vocals.

To give a bit of context about the group at the time, the members had shown their talents and producing skills during their pre-debut Mnet survival show Pentagon Maker. However, Pentagon didn't get creative control at the start of the career, even if there were some members like Hui, Dawn or Jinho producing b-sides since debut, as well as Kino collaborating in the choreographies. It was after Hui gave away Never (a song he made when he was a trainee) and Energetic (a song he sent in case they didn't like Never) to Mnet for Produce 101 season 2 and their debut group Wanna One, both songs becoming huge hits in Korea, that Cube started to let them get more involved.

Their mini albums Demo 01 (released in September 2017) and Demo 02 (released just 2 months later, in November 2017) were their first steps as a self-produced group with the members involved in all the tracks. However, their following release Positive is the first album where the members had unprecedented levels of creative freedom: from getting to participate in the meetings with Cube executives and staff to discuss the comeback, coming up with the album name (Positive being the start of their PTG album trilogy, that's followed up by Thumbs up and Genie:us), choosing the MV filming site, participating in the choreography (not just Kino but also other members, for example Shinwon came up with many moves including the kiss kiss! part) and getting to voice their opinions on the fashion concept, MV, the album cover, etc.

So not just Shine as a song, but the whole release was Pentagon showing what they got. Every aspect of the comeback and album has the members' traces all over it, and I think it's something very important that needs to get highlighted about this era.

There's also a funny backstory behind the reason why Shine was made, which is Hui being pissed off by his own song, lol. Their previous title track Runaway, produced by Hui himself, was on the 'noisy' side and he would feel annoyed listening to it early in the morning when he just woke up and had to rehearse the song during promotions. That made Hui realize that he wanted a change in their sound, and decided to focus on making easy-listening music that anyone could enjoy even in the morning, and for it to have a positive, fresh and lively vibe.

With that thought, Hui would start to compose their new song with his piano.

Dawn dropped by the studio while Hui was working, and after listening to what he had made, he told Hui that the beat sounded like loser (jijiri). Hui loved the idea, the song was even originally titled Loser, that the 2 of them continued to work together on the lyrics, Wooseok and Yuto also writing their own raps, and were so focused that Shine only took a couple of days to be finished.

In Shine, the song's character is someone in love who has self-deprecating behavior, referring to themselves as a loser and a leech who could not compare to their crush. However the song has a hopeful ending, with the person uplifting themselves in the final verse that they'll eventually shine in front of love.

But getting Shine to become the title track wasn't an easy task, as the members have said that the song received mixed reactions in the company, some thinking that the lyrics were too childish and there was a lot of debate about whether to release it or not despite the members pushing for it. I think it was Shinwon who said in his radio show Penbamra that an executive with a lot of power was the one who ended up giving the greenlit.

Hui mentioned at the time that since it was a new style for them, the line distribution went through many changes and while working out which part suited each member, they re-recorded the song around 5 times. I can't link it, but there's a vlive from that era where Hui showed Kino's recorded version of Yanan's My Baby! line in front of an embarrassed Kino, lol.

The MV filming took place on March 21st (on their big brother BTOB's 6th anniversary) and it was a very cold day with the members and staff freezing, the temperature dropping to -2ºC and it started to snow despite it was already spring. As some may know, the spring snow that fell during the Shine MV filming inspired Kino to produce Pentagon's Spring Snow, which was released a year later as a b-side in their Genie:us album and became the group's most popular b-side.

Shine received good responses and Pentagon was regularly trending in Korean sites, but it wasn't big upon release. It took some time to grow, as other idols started to promote and dance to the song, it became popular among dance academies, Kino's fancam at a fansign going viral in Korean community sites and also gaining attention as a stan attractor due to how well he treats fans.

The song started rising and on May 1st, almost a month after its release, it finally entered Melon's Top 100 and spent some time there, so Cube decided to extend their promotions.

One of my favorite performances from those promotions is this Show Champion stage where the members are so happy that you can hear them laugh through their mics and Hui even messes up his line towards the end.

Since I've already given a lot of info about Shine, I want to briefly highlight the album's b-sides, as it's also their anniversary.

The mini album starts with Off-Road, produced by Kino, which talks about the pressure they felt while preparing to debut. It was chosen as the promoted b-side that Pentagon performed in music shows since it was a similar style to their previous title tracks.

Think about you is produced by Jinho, he described it as a cute song about being in love that's perfect to listen in spring. A lot of non-universe might not be aware, but Jinho is part of Pentagon's producing line since their early years. Although after this album he slowed down his output compared to other members, mostly writing lyrics, and in later years he would show up more as a producer in their Japanese discography like Mr Wolf and Billie Jean.

Do it for fun (Rap unit) is playful song produced by the rappers, the song's title was a popular phrase that was often said among Pentagon members.

Something interesting about the ballad Nothing I can do is that if you listen to the start of the song, you will notice that in the first verse Shinwon says 'please be happy', the very same line that Shinwon does 2 years later in the climax of Pentagon's Daisy.

And the mini album ends with Let's go together, a fun and comforting song produced by Dawn.

Several members mentioned that Shine was the concept that felt more compatible with themselves, the comeback where the members found their own color and realized what sort of group they wanted to be. As a result, their music only kept getting better over time. Personally, the following 2 releases from the PTG trilogy, Thumbs Up and Genie:us, are absolute gems that I'd rank higher than Positive, which is still a great album.

I know that once you bring up Pentagon and Shine, people will jump to bring up the dating, Dawn leaving, and lamenting about how big Pentagon could've been. Last year Kino mentioned that if there's one thing he wishes he could change, is the fact that Pentagon is perceived as a pitiful group, as he believes that Pentagon is a group filled with talented members who are good people. It's something that resonated with me, because as a universe it is something that I believe too. Kino continued that after he noticed people had this view about them, he didn't want to cry on camera or openly show his emotions, because he'd worry about reinforcing this pitiful image. But if anything, I view Pentagon being an emotional group as one of their strengths, as that sentimentality carries on in their work.

Of course I wish things would've been easier for Pentagon, but the group is not a sad story that has ended, and that's why I wanted to write this post, to celebrate Pentagon as they are and what they accomplished. Even several groups who are considered to be bigger, have talked about not having a representative song that non-fans can recognize. Members like Hui and Kino, who have performed Shine as soloists at Korean festivals in recent years with non-universe or even non-kpop fans among the audience, always point out how they get happily surprised that people sing along whenever they perform it, even if it's already been 8 years since its release. Even if it wasn't a huge hit that topped the charts, to have a self-produced song, where they were tightly involved, reach this level of recognition isn't easy.

Pentagon members are proud of Shine, it's a song that can't be forgotten when talking about kpop in 2018, and they are still happy to perform it, so I hope this post can also bring a new appreciation for it.