SM the Ballad's 2nd album Breath is a collaboration ballad album of SM Entertainment singers. It's their second album, which they released after their first album release 4 years ago in 2010.

Proven vocalists Girls' Generation's Taeyeon, SHINee's Jonghyun, Super Junior's Yesung, f(x)'s Krystal, EXO's Chen, Chinese rookie Zhang Li Yin, and Super Junior-M's Zhou Mi lent their voice to the making of this ballad album.

The album contains a total of 10 songs, including the instrumental intro "Dear," as well as Japanese and Chinese tracks. So actually there are 5 new songs on this album. Even still, since different artists sang the versions in Japanese and Chinese, the songs will have different feels to them.

Most of SM's trendy songs have been works of foreign composers. However, excluding "Breath" and "A Day Without You," the entire album was produced in Korea, meaning that local composers were chosen to express emotions and lyrics. If the ballad genre is too contrived, it could have a negative effect, so it's good that they've made this decision.

Nevertheless, traces of calculative dance song making formulas still remain in "Breath." Even though SM's all-star vocalists participated in the album, it was lacking in a sense that the singers weren't able to show off their talents 100%.

SM used the strategy of staggering the song releases in order to build up curiosity and anticipation for the album. However, considering the big ranks of the singer involved, the album didn't show great power on the music charts. (On the other hand, the initially unanticipated duet "Some" by Junggigo and Soyou stood at number 1.)

If anything, SHINee Onew's single "Moonlight" is noteworthy. Just like Taeyeon's "If," it's a song that is not very SM, but is doing surprisingly well. It's nice to have a set style, but sometimes it could be a better idea to let the singers do their own thing. After all, they're too established to just get a passing grade with their songs now. They should be blowing expectations out of the water. This album was good, but no great, and definitely could have been much, much better.