Isaac: What is this? Kevin: The honky-tonk.
Isaac: Donkey Kong? Kevin: [exasperated] No!
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture plays]
Umu: So, now you'll be reacting to… (Hugo: God, yes, AKMU. Mm.) Umu: …brother and sister group AKMU.
Umu: The next two songs… (Rachel: Aww…) Umu: …you'll be reacting to are from their 2017 "Winter" album,
and are composed and written by the brother, Chan-hyuk, and arranged… Hugo: Is he still… is he still in the army?
Umu: Yes. Hugo: Dammit. U: …arranged by the resident pianist Lee Hyun Young
"Chocolady" was written since Chan-hyuk cannot drink coffee, and loves hot chocolate. For him… Seiji: Aww… sad… (U: [laughter])
U: …sweet love is more like hot chocolate than an Americano.
In an interview, he said "a Chocolady is a girl that doesn't match me. She doesn't try to impress me or try to play hard-to-get."
"A Chocolady is someone who is sweet to begin with, but not too much that could be burdensome,
like taking a first sip of hot chocolate." Collin: What an analogy…
Kevin: [singing] Chocolady, chocolady chocolady choco… [starts music]
Isaac: And we're into a… guitar.
Kevin: What… what time signature?
Seiji: Alright. [laughter]
Stephen: That was nice, 'cause I couldn't tell what the pulse was, and then it just came in!
Rachel: I love when you can't tell what the meter is in the first… (Hugo: Yeah, I know, you're like…) …two seconds,
and then you're like [surprised sound] Hugo: Oh god, I love AKMU so much. [laughter]
R: He's got a great voice…
Aaron: [laughter] I like that. [imitates guitar slide] Fiona: Love that reverb.
Aaron: Or… [imitates guitar slide, moving hand the opposite direction] Fiona: [mimcs Aaron's vocalization]
Stephen: Ooooh! …That was sick.
Aaron: Wait, her voice is EVERYTHING. Oh my…
Hugo: [imitating vocals, pronouncing with a long 'A'] Macchi-A-to. Rachel: [also imitating vocals] …A-to. Both: [laughter]
Rachel: I wouldn't know how to pronounce that word.
This is a really funny… exercise in text stress.
Stephen: Dude, they've got an ORGAN. (Seiji: Yeah.) Do you hear that?! That's nice.
Collin: This is good… this is interesting.
R: Yeah, they harmonize really well. They almost have, like, the exact same timbre.
…Probably because they're related!
Stephen: It's really cool, 'cause like… the guitar part, like [sings guitar notes]… like, they don't play the
downbeat, so it like (Seiji: Yeah.) tricks your ear.
Stephen: And then they just come in with the groove.
Stephen: Ooooohhhh! Seiji: Oh… [laughter]
Fiona: I love… the different stress on… "Americano"…
…you know, that sounds really cool. Aaron: Ahh…
Stephen: [imitating vocals] Chocolate…
Seiji: Oh…alright.
Henry: Oh! Elizabeth: Ooh…
Henry: [excitedly] Tritone sub!
H: [snaps fingers with beat] R: Yeah, I love, like, the Sara Bareilles piano texture.
…What's that called? Like, comping?
Stephen: But also like… I like that cross-rhythm that they're doing like that.
Like the [sings and claps in rhythm]
They were doing it… (Seiji: Oh.) …yeah, just right here, that was nice.
Polyrhythmic! Seiji: [laughter]
Elizabeth: They're very far away from, like, a tonic… they're really giving us lots of, like…
…seventh chords. So… it feels…
I'm thinking Debussy, 'cause I played Debussy last night, but just like…
This constant feeling of like floating… like, there's… there's…
…tonic doesn't matter, where it's just pretty.
Kevin: [reading lyrics]: "Your order (Isaac: Bewitched!) is bewitching me…"
Isaac: Woooooooow…
Kevin: Dorian.
Isaac: [excited vocalization]
Aaron: [reading lyrics] "I'm pouring milk on the powder and I'm trying to get her number"?
Umu: [laughter]
Fiona: Uhh… what kinda milk you talking about?!
…Better be almond! Umu: [laughter]
Stephen: You hear that… that, like, they leave out that downbeat. Seiji: Yeah.
Henry: Yeah, he's like starting on… [sings rhythm of guitar part]
…it's weird.
Kevin: I… I do like her singing the last one. That's… ahh, they're just so creative with…
…the way they distribute the voices, and…
Like, sounds like…
Isaac: [singing] Deep Choc… Chocolady! Kevin: It sounds like… real art, y'know?
Jarod: It's like…
Collin: [laughing] It's SO strange, man! Jarod: It's… taken on, like, a new character, like just sound-wise… I don't know.
Collin: Yup. …I like the tone of the guitar. Jarod: Yeah.
K: That's a real guitar solo… with the distortion.
Both: [mimic guitar sounds]
A: That jazz keyboard at the end… [sings note from end of song]
F: Those are instruments that would be in a coffee shop.
A: Yeah, like I get that… that (F: Happy…) coffee shop, summery, like… F: coffee shop vibes…
A: …lighthearted… and it's like… such a non-…
…like, when… when we talk about, like, toxic masculinity, I feel like this is like, the complete opposite.
It's masculine in some ways, but it's like… more appreciative than… (F: Organic masculinity.)
A: …than, like, condescending. (F: Mm.) And that's what I really just like… love about it,
but I also love… the creative, like…
way to emphasis different words, and like, how it fits into a melody, and like,
it's catchy, and it's awesome, and just… YES.
Like, uh… and I love her voice, too, like (F: Wow.) wow. F: [mimicing song] Vanil-LA? I stan that.
Jarod: 'Cause it's like… there's like so many different (Collin: [laughter]) like, sounds and the music takes, like, (C: Oh, sorry…) very different characters: you got, like, this like…
…"Route 66" bluesy, kinda like [imitates guitar] C: Yeah, that was weird… it's like ZZ Top.
J: Right, right. …You start hearing the hints of what could be a guitar solo, and you're just like, you know,
"give it to me", which is really cool… C: [laughter] J: You get it at like the very end… and then
it's just like, it's got this really kind of like campy…
…fun, happy-go… happy-go-lucky, y'know?
C: Does a lot of K-Pop music have these sort of fun themes? Because you know, there's a difference
between, like, a thing that's like wholesome, and a thing that's just like creative.
'Cause that was creative, and that was fun. Umu: Everything's different. I'd say…
some groups are known for more creative things, and this is definitely one of the groups that are known…
C: Oh, okay. U: for… having creative, like… they did a song on dinosaurs.
U: And they did (C: SICK!) a song on… on ramen.
C: Okay. Alright. U: And they… did a song on crossing your legs.
C: [laughter] …what?! U: Yeah.
J: See, that's what I love about it. Because it's like… C: See, no, I actually… I like this. J: It's so… them. …It's so them. C: That's… that's creative!
C: That's super cool. 'Cause it's not usually convincing that someone can talk about hot chocolate, and it be…
either, like, this is stupid, or this is like, just trying to be super wholesome. Like that was… that was cool.
I: Yeah, some of the notes were just so… odd. Like the way they… fly up and down.
Music in general is like, well, you have up, linear, or down…
but then you can choose to go, like, random spikes with… uh, use of chromaticism.
K: Okay, so… (I: [laughter]) I like how this song is kind of hard-hitting, like, you can literally…
You can SERIOUSLY groove to some of these triplets.
But yet… when you hear the vocals, you kinda just wanna chillax.
And at the beginning when the vocals come in, the instrumentals do get more chillax, but then later on,
it's kind of a fusion of that… more hard-hitting edge, and the calmness of them just…
listing drinks and comparing them with… this lady, you know, and talking about what he likes in this lady.
Stephen: The reason why we were all kind of in the beginning like "what is going on", then we were like "whoa!" 'cause… they…
What they did is… they have a rhythm where like, you know… when…
When we're listening to music, we feel this really big pulse, right? That's why people at concerts will…
y'know, like, clap together, and sway from side to side, 'cause… the drummer…
and the rest of the rhythm section, like the rest of the band is delineating those big pulses.
In the part, in the beginning and in certain parts of the song, they eliminate that.
So, as a listener, like if you were listening to that, and say you were dancing, and all of a sudden they did that,
everybody would kinda all of a sudden just, like, start to be really uneasy. Seiji: Right…
Stephen: Which is… a really, really cool effect, 'cause it… it tricks your brain for a sec, into thinking that it's a different…
either tempo, or a different rhythm, and then, it makes it super sweet when they come in with the actual groove…
because then it… it's like even more surprising. Y'know? Seiji: Yeah.
H: [dramatic gasp] I love that song.
E: Yeah, I think they definitely… were playing with a lot of different aspects of music-making,
like rhythm, meter, and, uh… especially like…
Finding a tonic… was especially hard in some of the verses, because they were… adding a lot of, like,
sevenths, and… diverting away from tonic. That was pretty cool. And the instrumentation…
Y'know, you were saying it… it was basic, it was a lot of, like, light acoustic-y sounding… string instruments.
H: And one thing that they did, that I thought was interesting… like, there wasn't…
There was definitely an area where they like, tonicized IV in kind of an unexpected way…
and not as like a subdominant. Like, the interlude was just… it was in A minor, and then suddenly it was in D major for a minute, and I was like:
[surprised sound]
[sings part of melody] And you think that he would go:
[singing] six, five, one. But he goes [sings part of melody]
Yeah, and it goes to [sings] F#… E: Yeah… H: …and it's 3 of D. It's very strange.
It was really cool… like, it's just sort of… the… yeah. It was nice.
Make… ear… happy. Let's… move on. Umu: [laughter]
Umu: So this is "Reality", which was released on the same exact album (A: Oh, okay.) …as "Chocolady."
U: It is… basically about everyday life, and how life isn't always a lovely experience…
it's also very gritty and unpleasant.
People may look… happy in the mirror, but in reality they might be miserable.
Chan-hyuk mentioned that he wanted to make a song that had a "yodel" vibe.
S & S: [laughter] A yodel vibe?
U: Which… can be kinda heard during the chorus.
K: [singing] Baby, every morning there are mountains to climb.
Get up, this is what I see… I: It's Carly Rae Jepsen? K: Welcome to… [plays music]
I: [finishing Kevin's song] Reality. K: Got it.
Both: [laughter]
I: [imitating song] whoop whoop!
Seiji: They like starting it, like, from a very open… Stephen: Yeah.
Seiji: Open, like… rhythmic thing. Stephen: Yeah…
where it's kinda like, which… where is this gonna go?
I: [gasp] … [laughter] K: Honky-tonk.
I: Ohhhhhh… wow, this is a treasure.
C: [laughter]
C: Okay, this is sick!
Stephen: It's funny that… the…
…meaning of the song, 'cause it… for me, it sounds like kind of… playful, sort of comical?
Seiji: Yeah. Stephen: Like, like how… [sings rhythm]
like… staccato, and just very rigid… Seiji: Yeah. Stephen: …everything is, y'know? Which is funny.
Seiji: That, and like, the schoolhouse instrument vibe? Stephen: Yeah!
Stephen: Well, 'cause… I guess makes sense if they're talking about how, like, everything's on a surface level, and y'know?
Seiji: Yeah.
H: Ahh, there it is. I can hear that yodeling vibe.
J: Ahh, the vibraslap… YES!
[imitates vibraslap sound] [laughter] y'know, that's so good.
I: What is this? K: The honky-tonk.
I: Donkey Kong? K: [exasperated] No!
H: Oh! …What's that…
…fuckin' bass trombone playing?
Ah! The bass fill was so sick.
I: 0-1-4, 0-1-4, 0-1-4, 0-1… [laughter]
K: It IS 0-1-4… I: Yeah… K: No, wait…
I: [sings part of song] K: 0-1-5. I: 0-1-5, oh, 'cause it's C#.
K: No, 0-1-4, 0-1-4. I: 0-1-5, 0… K: 0-1-4, 0-1-4.
F: Wow… this turned into a party. Those cool drums…
H: Ooh, I like how they had the chorus going underneath that, kind of.
As it's… in the instrumentation. R: Yeah, there's so many opportunities for different chords. (H: Mm-hm.)
F: I like it… ahhh! A: [laughter] F: Ahh! [sings, imitating vocals]
Still like…
A: It's like riding a horse. F: It's like…
Both: [mime swinging a lasso] F: [sings, imitating vocals]
E: Ohhh… H: Endless modulation. E: Let's just modulate forever!
H: To the key it was already in!
Chromatic mediants until you get back to where you started.
It's like the M.C. Escher of chromaticism. E: [subtle eyeroll]
F: I love how they take, like, "gret", which is like…
…what? No… no one who… who would repeat that? "Gret"?
It's not the most, like, beautiful syllable, but it sounds so cute.
J: Wow. C: [laughing] What is this?!
I: [mimicing vocals] …ality, ality, ality, ality… K: Multiple Chan-hyuks?
A: Yes! The tag! Yes! F: [laughter]
F: [sings ending notes of song] A: I enjoy his…
…like, use of words, just… (F: [laughter]) …just because it's like, it's so creative, like this whole…
Like, "reality, ality, ality".
F: "Regret, gret, gret"… A: You get that… yeah! Yeah. F: Ahhh!
C: Alright, that was sick! Gotta hand it to you, that was sick. …Everything about it was unique.
Stream of consciousness?! Like this guy… [laughter]
He's just like "Ahhh, I'll write this, whatever…" [laughter] J: [laughter] Right, right, right…
C: Chocolate and mint again… okay.
J: We sit down, we listen to it, we're on a ride… because it's… you start off with this…
…saloon-esque piano… I don't even know, like, you know what I'm sayin? Like that, that (U: Yeah…) kinda piano sound…
C: Well, the honky-tonk. J: The honky-tonk. (C: Yeah.) Yeah, yeah yeah.
J: So you start off there, and then we get into like… there, there was like the one… I made a comment about like…
Ahh, what was… I don't know how to describe the sound, but I'm like "oh, it feels like we're at like… some sorta ceremony."
U: [imitates section of song] J: Yeah… Yeah yeah, it feels like… U: Yeah, when he was, like, announcing…
C: Ohhh, oh… okay. U: [imitating song] AKMU… festival! J: Because… U: [continues singing]
J: Right right right… (C: [laughter]) It feels like we're at some sort of, like, big fest… yeah, exactly, that's it.
Because it's like… so DIFFERENT than everything that's going on, because it feels like we're just going, like, from so many different destinations, but it…
…it… works…
C: But it also… like, the whole thing is, like, super lighthearted, right? Like, that's the point.
There's also the thing, like about reality… and like… so there's this underlying thing, and it's also like, well…
I'm in… you know, my imagination I'm this thing. J: Mm-hm.
C: And like… not reading too much into that, but like… there's some different shades going on.
And it's… like, you don't see them coming! And it's… impressive.
Stephen: I love how they're able to create a mood, and a setting, that matches the meaning of their lyrics
to where, like… some of the songs, that are great songs, that we listened to earlier, where it's like…
Song is about something sad, but the groove is so… amazing, I just wanna smile. You know, just like stuff like that. But here, it's like…
…talking about reality, and everything being… you putting on a show…
They totally do that, and just, like, the instrumentation, and… how they sing… the, the lyrics…
…how the whole song is constructed. It's just really really cool how they set a mood, and they do it very well.
Seiji: Yeah, there's a lot going on, kinda like a "Schoolhouse Rock" vibe… slash, uh… Stephen: Mm, yeah.
Seiji: …slash, musical vibe… kinda like bluegrass-y at some points too, with, uh… some of the…
…like, kinda soaring, like, pentatonic… Stephen: Yep. Seiji: …"1, 3, 5, 6" type of… lines. Stephen: Mm-hm.
U: And did you guys like "Reality" or "Chocolady" better?
Stephen: I liked "Chocolady"… Seiji: Yeah… Stephen: That was pretty sick. Seiji: Yeah, I think… same.
Stephen: But I mean they're both really good songs. Seiji: Yeah.
Problem is, the other one… the other one was kinda like a little bit too Starbucks-ish for me… Stephen: Mm.
Seiji: But I think that was just because of, like, the words… Stephen: [laughter]
Stephen: Seiji's true feelings about Starbucks come out. Seiji: I know.
Umu: Hello everyone, I'm Umu, ReacttotheK channel creator, and I'd like to thank you for watching this video.
I really hope you enjoyed, or learned something from it.
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