Eight years after his debut as a member of SM Entertainment’s NCT project, DOYOUNG gets a chance to let his killer vocals and musical identity shine on a 10-track solo album. YOUTH is presumed to be the last major music release for DOYOUNG before mandatory military enlistment, and the 28-year-old singer leaves it all on the table, eschewing subgroup NCT 127’s trademark pomp and boisterousness for something less experimental, though just as exuberant. The album is teeming with pop-rock ballads, and features two songs written by the artist himself. Fans of “Perfume”—the sexy electropop banger that DOYOUNG contributed to as part of NCT DOJAEJUNG in 2023—will not find much similar in YOUTH. Instead, the singer offers a more thoughtful, emotive flavor of musical catharsis. “Riding the melody, I'll meet you at the place/Where I've always dreamed of/With the song of the new spring,” DOYOUNG sings in the theatrical album opener “Beginning,” which he wrote. “Little Light” is a power ballad written by LUCY bassist-producer Cho Won Sang at the request of DOYOUNG, who admires the upbeat yet sentimental style of his K-pop contemporaries. That sonic signature is on full display here as DOYOUNG uses his warm, powerful vocals to sing about a light strong enough to lead through a metaphoric darkness: “It's fine if the skies get muddy for a second/’Cause I'm still blinded by/The briefest comet flare.” Elsewhere on YOUTH, DOYOUNG brings in rapper bandmate Mark and Girls’ Generation’s TAEYEON to feature on “Time Machine,” a pop ballad about a couple struggling to hold on to what they have (“Shall we try the time machine?/Back to the you and me at the beginning”).