Russian Roulette (Red Velvet EP)

Background and release

Despite earlier reports of Red Velvet having a summer comeback, S.M. Entertainment announced that the group will release a new album in September. Member and leader Irene talked about the difficulties the group faced while preparing for the album on the September 9 broadcast of the radio show Super Junior's Kiss the Radio and stated that it was "physically and mentally tiring as the comeback date kept getting postponed".

After revealing the first teaser on September 1, they announced that the group will release their third extended play on September 7, with 7 tracks in the album. They revealed the album was to be called Russian Roulette, the same name as its title track.

Composition

The title track "Russian Roulette" is a synthpop song that has an arcade sound feel with a retro 8-bit sound source. The song was composed by Albi Albertsson, Belle Humble and Markus Lindell who also had a part in composing their previous album's title track "One of These Nights". Its lyrics compare the process of winning someone's heart with a game of Russian roulette. On the September 13 broadcast of SBS Power FM radio show "Choi Hwa Jung's Power Time", the members revealed that the song was written before they debuted. They heard the song then, when they were still trainees, not realizing they would release it.

"Lucky Girl" is a retro-style dance-pop song composed by Hayley Aitken and Ollipop with lyrics written by Kenzie. "Bad Dracula" was composed by Tomas Smågesjø, Choi Suk Jin & Nermin Harambasic from Dsign Music and American singer-songwriter Courtney Woolsey with lyrics by Jo Yun Gyeong, who also wrote the lyrics of the title track. "Sunny Afternoon" is a 90s throwback, slick song and is composed by Swedish producers Simon Petrén & Andreas Öberg, Maja Keuc and Kim One with Korean lyrics written by Jeong Ju Hee. "Fool" is an acoustic pop song written by 1월8일 of Jam Factory and composed by Malin Johansson and Josef Melin. "Some Love" is a trop house song written and composed by Kenzie, while "My Dear" was written and composed by Hwang Hyun of MonoTree.

Promotion

Red Velvet held a special countdown to the release of their album through the Naver V app on September 6, just an hour before the release of "Russian Roulette"'s music video and the album. The group started their music show promotions on September 8, on M! Countdown, performing "Russian Roulette" and "Lucky Girl". This was followed by performances on Music Bank and Inkigayo where they also performed both songs.

Music video

The music video is bright and bubbly like the song, and semi-sports themed. In it, the girls are seen playing tennis and dodgeball and were also seen at a pool. They also wore various colorful outfits throughout the music video. While seemingly fun and playful, the members are seen in different scenes trying to inflict harm on each other. Dropping tennis balls, pianos, refrigerators, and lockers on each other. Pushing one member in front an oncoming car or into an empty swimming pool, and even trying to feed the rest of the members brightly colored nuts and bolts instead of cereal. The scenes were inspired by clips from The Simpsons' fictional cartoon show, Itchy & Scratchy.

During their Naver V broadcast on September 6, the group stated that while filming the music video they broke large parts of the set which the staff had to rebuild. Member Joy also expressed her concerns about its rating due to some of the scenes' violent content.

Kyle Hanagami choreographed the song, his third time working with the group after "Be Natural" in 2014 and "Ice Cream Cake" in 2015.

Critical reception

Billboard's Tamar Herman wrote that the song was "more saccharine than their typical sound" and described the music video as a "bubbly, athletic-themed music video that offered fun times for all as a murderous ode to The Simpsons' impish duo Itchy and Scratchy." It ranked 6th on Dazed Digital's 20 Best K-pop Tracks of the Year. Taylor Glasby commented that the video "has a sinister combination of sweetness and threat" and called the song "devilishly satisfying".

Bradley Stern of PopCrush called the title track a "perky, retro-sounding electro-pop tune" that was expected from most k-pop idols, and praised the black comedy in the song's music video. He compared it to the film Jawbreaker and said it's "pretty genius".

Commercial performance

The album peaked at No. 2 on Billboard's World Albums Chart and peaked at No. 18 on Heatseekers Albums chart, their highest to date. The title track "Russian Roulette" also charted at No. 2 on World Digital Songs, making it their highest ranking on the chart. The album debuted at no. 1 on South Korea's Gaon Album Chart, with "Russian Roulette" charting at no. 3 on its Weekly Digital Chart, before rising to no. 2 a week later. All of the album's other tracks also charted. "Russian Roulette" became the most viewed k-pop music video for the month of September in America and worldwide. The album peaked at number 63 on the Billboard Japan Hot Albums for the week of September 19, 2016.

The group won their first music show trophy for "Russian Roulette" on the September 13 broadcast of The Show.

Personnel

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Russian Roulette.