Red Velvet and the “Peek-A-Boo” Comeback
On November 17, 2017, Red Velvet released Perfect Velvet, their first full-length album since 2015’s The Red, and the music video for title-track “Peek-A-Boo.” The album focuses on the “velvet” side of their concept and contains nine new songs from the girls, featuring pop, hip-hop, R&B, and soul while also experimenting with disco and dance. While the album is centered around their “velvet” concept, “Peek-A-Boo” is a dance-pop track that beautifully blends the “red” and “velvet” concepts, showcasing the members’ vocals in a new way.
The Music Video
For fans of B-grade horror movies, the music video for “Peek-A-Boo” is a treat. Filmed in a 100-year-old home in Los Angeles, CA, the video opens with the girls standing on the porch at night, with Yeri holding a small crossbow, before cutting to a pizza delivery boy urgently trying to make a call on a payphone nearby. Funnily enough, viewers get to see that the payphone has a flyer about missing delivery boys on the side of it, but this goes missed by the delivery boy.
We then cut to the house during the day, the song finally starting as the door opens to the girls playing dead in the entryway. The video is seductive and dark, with the girls luring pizza delivery boys to their house and then poisoning them, using the boys for mysterious rituals. The current pizza boy manages to escape as we’re treated to the opening scene once more; however, we now get to see that he’s unable to get the call to go through. The video closes with Irene climbing out of the passenger’s seat of his car as a dial tone rings, fading to black before showing the boy’s pizza delivery shirt in a glass case. Lyrically, the track compares a new romantic relationship to a children’s game, so it’s interesting that Red Velvet went with kidnap, rituals, and homicide for the music video.
The Comeback Performances
Red Velvet’s comeback performance was on Music Bank on November 17, 2017. The girls performed “Peek-A-Boo” as well as disco-styled dance track “Look.” For the performance of “Look,” the members performed in front of a large screen that alternated between flashing colorful graphics, some similar to a keyboard. Each member wore heeled boots, pairing them with leggings, crop tops, and sparkles. Wendy, Irene, and Joy all kept their long hair down while Seulgi and Yeri both wore their hair in ponytails.
For “Peek-A-Boo,” each of the girls wore outfits that were seen in the music video and the concept photos, like Seulgi’s blue jumpsuit and Joy’s Wednesday Addams-esque dress. The large screen behind them showed a forest and full moon in shades of purple and blue during the verses while during the chorus it displayed their group name and a hypnotizing swirl of yellow, green, orange, and purple. What might confuse some is that for this performance, Yeri’s hair is shoulder length like we see in the music video and in the concept photos, but she has extensions in her hair for the performance of “Look.”
The Legacy
Red Velvet transitioned from their bright and bubbly image seen in their previous two singles “Rookie” and “Red Flavor” to a darker and more mature sound in “Peek-A-Boo” and it definitely paid off as this was the first time since their debut that the softer, more mature “velvet” side was received favorably by the general public. “Peek-A-Boo” received two music show wins, both from Inkigayo on December 10, 2017 and January 14, 2018.
“Peek-A-Boo” debuted at No. 12 and peaked at No. 2 on the Gaon Weekly Songs Chart and at No. 2 on the Billboard U.S. World Digital Songs Chart. It was Red Velvet’s third single in 2017 to enter the top five on the Gaon charts and their eighth overall Top 10 hit. The track was nominated for “Song of the Month (November 2017)” at the Gaon Chart Music Awards but did not win. Red Velvet did, however, get to perform the track at numerous end-of-the-year award shows, including the Mnet Asian Music Awards and Melon Music Awards.
Perfect Velvet peaked at No. 2 on the Gaon Albums Chart, No. 1 on the Billboard U.S. World Albums Chart, and No. 3 on the Billboard U.S. Top Heatseekers Albums Chart. The album was the fifth best-selling album of November on the Gaon Monthly Albums Chart. Perfect Velvet was nominated for “Album Division Main Award” at Golden Disc Awards and “Best Pop Album” at the Korean Music Awards but did not win either award.
On January 29, 2018, Red Velvet released the repackage of Perfect Velvet titled The Perfect Red Velvet along with title track “Bad Boy.” To read more about that comeback, you can check out the Artist Highlight we did here.