Red Velvet’s latest comeback, Zimzalabim, features such attractions as floating instruments, polygonal animals, and an unconventional use of pop song form.
Let’s discuss these in reverse order in this episode of Classical Composer Breaks Down the K.
I’ve discussed pop song form in past videos of this series, as has Umu in videos such as her Power Up review
but now let's look at it with a focus on the function of each section.
A lot of pop songs start with an introduction. This may serve to generally set up the tone of the song, like the introduction to RBB,
or it may serve to more directly foreshadow the chorus, such as the introduction to Power Up.
Then comes the first verse, which tends to start the song proper from a relatively calm state.
What constitutes relative calm depends a lot on the context of the song —
the first verse might still be quite energetic in a high-energy song, but it will leave room to grow.
The prechorus is ramping up energy into the chorus, which releases that energy.
In many cases, the chorus is where the catchiest melodies go.
In some cases, rather than a melody-focused chorus, there’s a bass-focused drop, such as in the Stray Kids’ Side Effects.
Then the energy level resets for the second verse. Overall, the second verse through chorus are likely to follow an essentially similar trajectory as before,
but with slight changes, because it's less engaging to hear something exactly the same as what you heard right about a minute ago.
There are many ways to introduce contrast into these sections — one fairly common way is to put a rap in the second verse where something was sung in the first verse.
For example, Soyeon's rap that I talked about in Episode 1 of this series, was in the second verse.
Then comes the bridge — as a section that only occurs once in the song, it tends to serve substantially as a contrast to the rest.
Something that, while possibly being built out of material from elsewhere [in the song], sets up the chorus to feel like a return —
you can’t return to something if you never left it in the first place.
The third chorus generally features some sort of escalation from previous choruses —
commonly in the form of added vocal descants, or added instrumental parts, or sometimes, a dance break.
Then, frequently, there’s an outro — this can be a short return to material from earlier in the song, to tie the end of the song back to the rest, such as the ends of RBB or Sappy,
or it can be a further escalation from the third chorus, as in the end of NCT 127’s Superhuman.
If we’re going to talk about how a song uses or subverts a form, it’s important to understand what the point of using the form was in the first place —
and that’s true whether it’s pop song form, or sonata form, or any sort of standardized form.
It’s not inherently impressive or interesting to follow a form —
most forms are, at their core, quite simple, and it's not difficult to follow a pattern of sections, nor will it guarantee a good result.
The point of following a form isn’t to have someone go
Congratulations! You got an A on your following the form assignment
The potential benefit of following a form is that it can provide a framework or architecture for the music.
Something that, even if the listeners don’t know musical forms themselves,
takes them through a series of rises or falls or departures or returns that make for a satisfying musical trajectory.
Similarly, it’s not inherently impressive or interesting to deviate from a form. It’s trivially easy to just...not do the thing.
But sometimes, if you understand well what a form was meant to do, you may realize that you want to do something different.
For example, the lack of final chorus in Cacophony’s song Breath, is more dramatically powerful because it doesn’t give the expected return or resolution.
So to quickly summarize the previous quick summaries, the first verse-prechorus-chorus represent a buildup of energy and establish the main materials of the song.
The second verse-prechorus-chorus echo that, often varying it at some stage.
The bridge provides contrast, which sets up a return to the final chorus, which is more, in some way, than the other choruses.
Now, let’s apply this model, and this understanding of the purpose of the model, to Zimzalabim.
There’s quite a bit that happens in the intro. Most relevant to our purposes are the tuned drums — on F, C, and G, if you were wondering —
and the bells, which, for timbral reasons, are quite tonally ambiguous. This is an intro that's setting up sounds that will be in the song in the future.
But several sounds are coming at you in such quick succession in the intro, that it tends to be quite disorienting, like a lot of things spinning around you quickly.
The first verse begins with none of these — only a snare drum carries over from the intro.
But it does start out with quite a dirty bass, more reminiscent of f(x)'s style than of most of Red Velvet's
(it's not as dirty as a true f(x) bass — compare to the best bass in pop, Red Light, with its hard, buzzing edge and minor ninth leaps.)
But, for the sake of this video, I’ll call it the f(x) bass, because that's clearly an influence.
This serves the expected function of a first verse — it gets the song going, but there’s not all that much happening yet.
In the prechorus, there’s suddenly a sense of harmony. And harmonic progressions. Which sound fresh, because those haven't been happening in the song thus far,
and create a sense of building, ramping up into the chorus, which is exactly what I said a prechorus would normally do.
This is clearly going to be completely normal use of pop song form— [Zimzalabim chorus starts playing]
Oh hey the bells are back.
So this fills part of the standard role of a chorus — it is catchy — you probably have Zimzalabim zim-Zimzalabim zim-Zimzalabim zim-zim stuck in your head.
But it doesn’t have the conventional sense of arrival or landing that we associate with a chorus —
the bells are, as aforementioned, tonally disorienting, and the bass is very quiet, so it's not particularly anchored.
And then the chorus is followed by the prechorus...wait, Scripting Sean?
Scripting Sean: Yeah? Hosting Sean: Don't you mean the chorus is followed by the verse? That's what we said was the order.
Scripting Sean: No, it's definitely the prechorus — listen, this is the prechorus melody
[prechorus melody plays, followed by the same melody shortly after the chorus]
Hosting Sean: Okay, the chorus is followed by the prechorus. And then, several measures later, by the verse.
And then several measures later by the prechorus some more, but not that much more, just like 4 measures, because then it's time for more Zimzalabims.
Sideways Sean: Zimzalabim Zim-Zimzalabim Zim-Zimzalabim Zim-Zim
So a couple of things to note here — one is that the prechorus has started sequence-breaking —
rather than just coming between the verse and the chorus, it came between the chorus and the verse...and then again between the verse and the chorus.
The second thing to note is that we haven’t heard the f(x) bass for a while, and, in related news, it’s time for a dance break.
Now, I talked about the possibility of a dance break in my general outline of the form,
but that was in the context of the third chorus, not at the end of the second chorus, or beginning of the bridge.
Having it here reminds us of the f(x) bass, but does so in a way that it's in isolation, so it doesn’t feel like a major arrival or landing.
And then there’s a bridge, which features some very nice Velvet chords, and Wendy being Wendy,
but it does exactly the function of contrast and leading into the final chorus that we would expect a bridge to do, so we’ll move on.
So we know the third chorus is a chorus, because it goes Zimzalabim Zim-Zimzalabim, which is the thing that choruses do,
and now it has the f(x) bass, which adds another layer, which is the thing that third choruses do.
but now the vocal melody has been replaced by a line that keeps inflecting upward, which gives the sense that this still isn't the real landing.
Because in Zimzalabim, the composers were playing a long game, in which the choruses were never meant to be the true landings,
and the prechoruses weren’t confined to their conventional positions.
Because it was all setting up for the outro, the one true arrival, with the energy of the prechorus melody, now not building anymore, but anchored by the f(x) bass.
And it has far more impact because they made you wait almost the entire song to achieve that resolution
As for the polygonal animals, I’m glad Red Velvet like polygons, since Polygons clearly like Red Velvet. At least two of them.
Hopefully someday they’ll get BDG into Kpop as well.
As for the floating instruments, (여자)아이들 have warned us of the dangers of those, specifically with regard to falling.
But Red Velvet seem to be practicing proper floating instrument safety, if not applying the same safety to elevators. You're not supposed to just drop them.
Thank you for watching this episode of Classical Composer Breaks Down the K. A link to Zimzalabim is, of course, in the description,
as is a link to a playlist of other episodes of Classical Composer Breaks Down the K.
Also, if you missed it, the last episode was on Ice Cream Cake, so if you want more Red Velvet, that already is here.