CRAVITY’s Sweet, Sour, Hot-Blooded Epilogue: Lemonade Fever
Photo: Starship Entertainment
CRAVITY returns afresh in Dare to Crave: Epilogue, a repackaged release of their full summer album Dare to Crave. The repackage, featuring three additional songs, rides the summer high of its predecessors “SET NET G0?!” and “Swish” all the way into November with its electro-pop elements and a sip of refreshing funk, riffing off an already-potent referential album into a somehow more vibrant destination.
Dare to Crave, and its accompanying rebrand, settled CRAVITY into a robust but varied sound, dabbling in pop-rock, synth pop, and even bossa nova. As the members posed sultrily with egg whites and emerged reborn, they rebranded the meaning of their original “Creativity + Gravity” portmanteau to “Craving Gravity,” marking their journey into a new world. The refresh offered a sonic journey and an opportunity for growth for the now fifth-year boy group that in the past often struggled to find their footing and branding under Starship Entertainment. The result was, in this author’s opinion, one of the strongest full-length K-Pop albums of 2025, with 12 full-length tracks that wander their way through exceptional pop music without a single miss.
Which poses the question: how do you embellish a release that’s both foundational and exceptional? To CRAVITY, the answer is plain and simple: you have some fun. The title track “Lemonade Fever,” with a name that oozes summer in mid-November, features a crazy catchy hook (“Sweet like lemonade” remains ensnared in my head) and a refreshing pop-funk sound that is undeniably satisfying. While only two minutes and thirty-nine seconds long, as is the curse of contemporary pop music, the song, thankfully, squeezes in a slam-dunk bridge, which moves from an airy stillness to a breakthrough rap, before culminating in an effusive high note. That final lemony chorus, loaded with ad-libs and celebration, is ever-so-satisfying.
A funkier twist on the group’s synth pop-rock sound, reminiscent of “Adrenaline” or perhaps, “Groovy,” “Lemonade Fever” brings citric acid fizz to a season of pumpkin-spiced lattes and tomato soups, satisfying their own eponymous, anachronistic craving. In a cheeky nod to their Dare to Crave egg-hatching conceptual roots, the music video features freshly-hatched chicks amongst silly, near-ridiculous vignettes that never lean towards solemnity: rainbowing lemonade, spit from member Seongmin’s startled mouth, subway bystanders falling for Jungmo, and the final hitter, an enormous, googly-eyed cartoon lemon crushing all of CRAVITY.
Rounding out Dare to Crave: Epilogue, B-sides “OXYGEN” and “Everyday” tap the repackage out at fifteen tracks. The bass-driven high drama of pop-track “OXYGEN” is perhaps more-suited to the November chill, as the members search for air in a pounding chorus. The song mirrors its own lyrics cleverly: “I’ve been losing oxygen, I…. I…. I…. I…” CRAVITY despairs, panting, with breathing sounds left into the mixing to sound raw but polished. A pop-rock song comprised of purely bass, percussion, and deliberate, torturous asphyxiation, “OXYGEN” is an addictively tart pairing to its sugary “Lemonade Fever” partner.
Final track “Everyday” is an upbeat electro-synth pop-rock track composed by member Allen (the last historically self-producing member yet to be featured for production on Dare to Crave.) “Everyday” offers a fitting capstone to CRAVITY’s epilogue. The song comes across its own epiphany, confessing its true feelings and foolishly wishing for each ephemeral moment together to last “forever and a day.” At the same time, “Everyday” places its heartfelt lyrical confession against an almost video game-esque 8-bit instrumental. Dripping in sincerity, this final track journeys through each precious day, sunsetting into the horizon: aware of its own naïveté but choosing to wish for forever, even as it concludes CRAVITY’s epilogue.
Dare to Crave: Epilogue capitalizes off of everything charming about its predecessor — eclectic genre-blending, and a titular, interwoven craving for refined yet playful music. CRAVITY may not need to dare for much longer, after rebranding themselves with music as good as this to fortify their own choice to evolve. Building from a triumphant summer album with three resounding tracks, Dare to Crave: Epilogue continues CRAVITY’s ambitions to knock their sound out of the park — giant plummeting lemons be damned.