Jamal: UUUH!
[Rossini's Semiramide overture plays]
Steve: Can we hug during this?
Umu: Yeah, sure...
...like, the entire time?
Steve: Yeah, we're gonna listen like this.
Umu: You are now reacting to the solo artist Yerin Baek
and her title track of her first full length album called 'Every letter I sent you', released in December 2019.
This song is Yerin's first release since leaving her former label JYP and forming her own company.
The lyrics are a confession of love for a boy who is closed off from the world.
And you actually won't need the cc's or anything because the lyrics are in English!
Both: Wow!
Umu: The song is composed by Cloud and Baek Yerin herself.
Cloud: I'm sorry, by who?
Brianna & Umu: Cloud!
Cloud: By who?
Umu: Not you, but A Cloud! Brianna: Ah, you making music now?
Umu: Let's get it!
Kevin: aA
"And you come..."
"...to..."
Kevin: I was trying to squeeze a Bee Gees reference within...
Kevin + Owen singing: "How deep is your love is your love"
"hoW dEep iS yOuR..."
Henry: 3 2 1!
Charlotte: CATS!
Owen: Professor McGonagall!
[t/n: Smooth editing...] Owen: Professor McGonagall!
Henry: Uh!
Henry likey~
Sam: Oh, her voice is so clear!
Jamal: UUH!
Raffi: What?! Her voice!
Sam: Right?!
Kevin: Her English is very good.
Owen: Yeah, you're telling me, this is a beautiful - she's got an amazing voice. It's so effortless.
Owen: Yeah, it's so much personality in her voice.
Henry: Oh.
Rafael: The song is good!
This is sick.
Those horns?
Jamal: Oooh, all right all right. Rafael: They sound real!
Jamal: That was lit.
Rafael: They are real? Cool.
Jamal: Definitely, that intonation was noice.
Sam: Hm, that altered note is sooo colorful!
Stephen: Nice.
Owen: This is good, bring us someplace!
Sam: Oh, and she adds the harmony, she adds the third, uuhh!!!
Stephen: Gotta have that cat, man, for support.
Steve: The cat... Stephen: Gotta have that cat, man, for support.
Stephen: That's why I have cats...
Steve: Cats...
Brianna: Uh.
The funky.
Cloud: I'm gonna go home and play this song for my cat, I'll be like: I love you!
Stephen: Oh, nice breakdown!
Steve: Oh!
Raffi: I didn't expect that.
Sam: Me neither.
Raffi: Kind of a dropout.
Jamal: Yeah this is lit! (Rafael: Wow!) The horns are so involved, I'm loving this, wow!
Stephen: Can I - yeah.
I was just gonna say, it's so nice to hear that it's actually real musicians and not MIDI. (Steve: Yeah)
Kevin: WHAT?
Owen: That was fun. (Kevin: Yeah)
That was just, that was like witty, that was a witty line.
Henry: Oh man, YES!
Raffi: It's very collaborative, like... (Sam: Yeah)
Sam: It seems like there is so much, it's so dense.
Jamal: OUH!
Raffi: It's deep!
Sam: It's deep...
Raffi: LIKE THE LOVE! Oh my gosh! Sam: Like the love, like...
Sam: Oh my gosh.
Cloud: Oh, we're doing a fade out, ooh.
Sam: No, give us more!
I want more.
That was so good.
Henry: Your jazz musicians are gonna have a field day with this one.
Charlotte: Yeah, I'm gonna let them take this one. (Henry: Yeah, absolutely) I just like the cat.
Stephen: I love cats, I'm a cat person
Henry: Oh gosh, her vocal tone is so beautiful, like all of her singing sounds so effortless and easy
and there is a bit of a breathiness to it but it's not husky, and I think she really - the whole thing is just mixed so well,
everything feels like it's in balance as far as sound goes, I think - I don't know if you agree (Charlotte: I do)
but like everything just really feels like it's in balance and I love it, it sounds so good,
is she single?
Jamal: I just feel like a lot of these K-pop songs are like:
We can do this, we have this, like, well that's so awesome,
but I felt like this, the harmony is more like jazz harmonies, so I am like:
But besides that...
Rafael: I was gonna say that.
Jamal: Yeah, I was like: Ah man, these chords are so thick!
HUH!
It was just a nice presentation, I liked how it ended with an instrumental that gave it space to breathe, which was cool.
Rafael: As opposed to other songs that we've listened to, I felt like the writing itself, from a harmonic perspective, developed the tune,
rather that the other songs where they were like:
The way that we are gonna develop this tune is we're gonna change the vibe, but not actually do much with the harmony itself.
This song was like, it was one texture for the most part, but the harmonies were really evolving throughout the entire thing
in like a very well thought out compositional way.
Umu: Did you guys have any specific favorite standout moments in the tracks, or like certain instrumental, or...
Stephen: I liked the instrumental break, or extended instrumental section, excuse me,
I thought that was really nice, and it was a nice way to end it, I wasn't expecting it, and it was really cool, like I just...
There was just kind of a steady burn and build, you know, it wasn't in your face but it matched the mood of the song.
Steve: I thought the melody was nice and their singing was great and...
And I liked the ducks.
Ducks are cool things. Looks like a mallard...
Umu: Oh! (dramatic camera shake)
I don't know any other ducks.
Stephen: Hey, you know...
butt shape with a point at the end, (Steve: That's what I mean) you know I'm saying...
Kevin: Hm. What an interesting song.
I think the instrumentals were very strong.
When I said earlier that: Uh, I'm wondering how the song will develop as far as vocals go, and whether the climax will be fulfilling...
I kind of got both, it was kind of fulfilling because I liked how the instrumentals blossomed,
I liked how the brass that we began to hear a little bit became this full brass chorus, if you will.
You know, her voice is very interesting because when you said that her voice has a lot of personality, I definitely agreed with it,
but as the song went on, it felt like her voice was the type where there are a lot of inherently great qualities,
but I don't think she did enough with that voice to really give enough personality to the song, as far as her vocals are concerned.
I liked the instrumental blossoming so much that I might come back to this and listen to this, so... (Owen: Yeah)
Owen: I think "blossom" is such a good word for it, like you could really feel the instrumentals evolve, I think, as they went on.
You know how when you hear a really great orchestral player and they have a long note, they can do such an amazing job of shaping it,
like you can really feel like they're almost adding everything but it doesn't necessarily get louder in volume,
it just feels like it's always got forward momentum, even though it's stationary.
I felt like if you were to take any bit of her singing, it would be really interesting and fantastic in that small bit,
but I feel like she didn't have a forward momentum, I think instead, actually, it felt like her vocals faded away.
Umu: And then the instrumentals kinda took over. Owen: They kind of took over, but I didn't necessarily want that to happen.
Owen: The sections felt terraced in interesting ways, that we got like,
We had level 1, we had level 2 for a while, and I was like: Okay, are we gonna get to this, you know?
And that would have been amazing, I think, if she had kept that momentum going.
Umu: You guys have the exact same opinion as Brianna and Cloud.
Brianna: So this song was giving me church, it was giving me funk, it was giving me groove!
So first of, I liked the instrumentation and how it went from more combo setting,
as in a rhythm section and two or three instrumentalist which was, I wanna say trumpet & flute,
to - and it ended with a big band, and I felt like that instrumentation and that combination of different groups
made it so that the ending was like, you know, it was going towards the ending and that was like the big moment,
but the things she was doing with her voice, like she kind of just stayed in the same register...
The only thing that was like giving me life, giving me flavor, giving me sauce, was the band behind her,
and I mean that's good because it does add to the song itself but I think she could have done more herself with just like,
I don't know, showing off her voice, but I don't know.
Brianna: That's just me, that's my taste. Umu: But isn't this song like not for showing off your voice, isn't it for -
Cloud: I, okay, I have two things, mainly.
I am so glad you said that 'cause I was kinda thinking on the same vibe,
a) This song was very soothing, (Brianna: Yeah) like everything about it is very sweet, lulling you to sleep, ready to go,
so her voice was really gentle, which I thought fit the vibe, and it was interesting that it was gentle in more of a mid-range or low range,
like she was more like, instead of like - 'cause usually when people are like gentle singing, it's more like higher register,
but there is definitely a spot, I think at like 2:30 or something, where I wanted her to build to a climax (Brianna: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.)
I thought she was gonna push through, like not even modulating per say, but just a nice, give the phrase a nice arc
Brianna: The band was building up and she wasn't. Cloud: Yeah, the "loving you more", I just want her to push through it,
and she like did a little, and then like plateaued, and I was like: No, keep going!
Charlotte: No, it's a good song, it's very nice, totally everything is in balance
I liked the pairing of instruments that they used throughout the whole song, that flute is always with trombone,
I don't know, it's such the pairing that you don't hear all that often,
but then when you do hear it it just makes perfect sense and you're like: Why don't people do that all the time?
and it's like: Oh. So that was nice.
Also, cat.
Stephanie: Again with this one, the bass line is so good.
Leon: I love the verse bass lines because they are like some rhythmic *demonstrates*, like that kind of
Umu: Syncopation? Leon: Yeah, syncopation.
Umu: Did you want to go through, 'cause I was curious what bass parts specifically you were talking about, (Rafael: Okay)
'cause I know there's a few times where they moved a little bit more?
*Rafael playing on piano*
Rafael: Yeah.
*Tasty jazz chord*
Rafael: Uhm...
Rafael: You- you're kind of out of focus too because I don't have my glasses...
Jamal: But I'm cheering you on, cuz you're a champ!
So from the iii chord, oftentimes something that would happen,
like if you want to be really functional, be like have a iii - vi - ii - V
this goes iii - ♭III (which is the tritone substitution for VI7)
ii - V - I
which is just like something cool that they put in there a lot to just like-
Jamal: Tritone sub! We love tritone subs, for sure.
Raffi: My favorite part was when she first opened her mouth and started singing.
Like, I just, I didn't expect it, and like what, what a timbre, that's just, her voice is so beautiful,
and then how she chooses to manipulate it, sometimes I was like: Is there gonna be vibrato here, or just straight tone,
but the balance is so intricate, it's very difficult, so I just fell in love with that, wow.
Sam: Yeah. I felt like her, she knew exactly what to do in terms of instrumentation and vocals,
and she had such control over her voice, and she knew what emotion she was trying to portray in different scenes,
and especially at that ending, when all the instruments were coming in, I think that's just the coolest thing.
I am...
The more I like something the less I have to say of it because my brain (Raffi: Yeah, you just love it) just is kind of blank,
but ah, I just, that was wonderful.
Stephen: You do smell really good...
Steve: Do I?
Stephen: I like it. Umu: Are you jealous~
Steve: It's just my natural Italian scent.