Peyton: What is happening?
Yeah, this is like....uhh...
Umu: So now you're reacting to Sunwoo Jung A's 'C A T', featuring the soloist IU.
From a Soompi article,
it says the two brilliant songwriters have known each other ever since IU was 20 years old, and then properly worked together for one of IU's songs.
Jordan: IU said that the lyrics are interesting because if you didn't know the title is 'C A T,' at first glance you would think a very arrogant person is talking to somebody else,
but once you read the title, it all makes sense. She thinks it's a very witty song. Composed and written by Sunwoo Jung A.
Charlotte: Meow.
Peyton: So when are you finally gonna hit the space bar? Charlotte: No! Umu: Meow!
Peyton: See? You jumped me, and then it stopped again. That's what you GET!
Kuh
aaa
ttt....
CAT
What?
It sounds like John Mayer.
Charlotte: *reads* ally cat
Peyton: Ooh, a little bit of a French thing.
(mimicking instruments)
Elizabeth: This is exactly what interacting with a cat is like.
Henry: True.
Peyton: mmmm a little bit of walk
Kevin: It's still so sparse.
Like, I have to think to know what the chords are.
Peyton: What?
This is some quirky sh*t.
I don't hate it.
Aaron: Yeah, I feel like it has like a lighthearted, friendship, um... Fiona: Like a vine. Feels like a vine.
Fiona: Eww...gross! Aaron: Eww!
Elizabeth: Ahh, we got some scat!
Sss CAT ing...
Umu: Ha ha.
Henry: I'm sorry, did you say something?
Melissa: And the violin has glisses sometimes.
So you know it's like real-ass a violin. James: Wow.
James: Wow.
Elizabeth: And because fiddle playing relies a lot on embellishment and
improvisation, I think it gives this
like, they're just kind of being comedic in the way,
like poking fun at what it's like to watch cats and to sing as a cat. So this playful vibe that the cat overarching
idea is, I think having that kind of instrumentation is good.
Peyton: Pffft! What is happening?
Yeah, this is like...
Uhhh, I like these lines, though.
(singing)
Fiona: They had like a broken glass sound, like they knocked something off a shelf. They're just like, I don't care, I'm cool.
Aaron: Well, also, the airiness in their...
Fiona: Voice. Aaron: Yeah, I like that. It definitely adds to the character. Fiona: Effortlessness.
Aaron: Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah, very French New Wave.
Isaac: Alice in the Wonderland. Kevin: That's Alice in Wonderland, you're right.
You spotted it before I did.
Nice.
(singing)
Oh.
James: Wow.
Damn. Okay. That's really interesting. I don't know what to say.
Melissa: Me neither.
James: Wow. Melissa: It's cute.
James: Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Just lust like the timbre of their voices
was very like,
like kind of breathy and high.
And the way they were using vocal slides as well, at some points. Melissa: Which matched the string slides.
(mimicking string slides) James: Yeah, it was really nice. And just the guitar was very simple,
it was just usually like one voice going at a time. Whenever there was
two voices singing at the same time
it was mostly in octaves until the end, when we actually heard some harmony,
which I also thought was cool, because when the harmony finally came in, it was the
it was the scat line, but harmonized... Melissa: The scat line was so cool. James: in the background while the melody was going on. It was super cool.
So they kind of like
put it, meshed it all together at the end. Melissa: I think it's really cool that they had that scat in there.
It's so jazzy. James: And then I don't even know what happened at the end.
Like I don't even know. It was just like, whhooo!
My brain was like, aughhh!
It was it was really nice. Then there was a really fast vocal thing at the end,
but it was so casual I like... I don't know. I just I really liked that. It was really, really cool.
Peyton: Uh, it was like super light, kind of quirky. A lot of chromatic motion, which kind of gives this
unsettling feeling for some people. Like it was a lot of kind of chromatic walkdown (singing).
Like a lot of things that you hear in really slow, bluesy jazz, you know?
And...but it was well done, though. I think it kind of fit the vibe
of the music video for sure, if they were going for something a little more quirky.
Henry: I think this is- this falls prey to something I've criticized other music about, but I wouldn't say is a super-huge problem with this.
I think that you have to watch the video in order to understand how the song works. Not that much, but it adds a
depth that I feel like you wouldn't otherwise get. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in the case of this song.
So. Elizabeth: Yeah, I mean the video itself is very well made. Henry: their makeup was awesome.
Elizabeth: Yeah, they really tried to frame it in a way that you understood that the mannerisms the women were embodying were
cat-like mannerisms. Like there was the one shot of
the woman's face like from the nose up and she was like
following the ball with her eyes, and just the way the light hit her face and the way that they
filmed her moving, it looked exactly like when a cat does that--when they're looking at something and they're
watching it go back and forth. So the video did add a lot. Like, I would have gotten that
it was a playful vibe, based on the instruments used Henry: Yeah. Elizabeth: And
the very flowing, improvisatory feel of the melody.
But I'm not sure I would have gotten the cat thing without the visual cues.
Isaac: It was relaxing. Kevin: Mmm. Isaac: Everything was very laid-back, even like the rhythm. And also the way they hold onto certain notes, like (singing).
It's all syncopation and they're just trying to pull it back as much as possible to really create such a nice
ambiance of the song. Kevin: Yeah, I really like how the song felt truly like a duet.
Like, I wasn't thinking oh, this is Sunwoo Jung A. Oh, this is
IU. It felt like they were just working together,
and even though there are other actors doing their thing, you can hear from the music that the chemistry between the two ladies
is very good. Isaac: Yeah. Also, I like the use of scatting.
It's like, you know, you don't just do scatting out of the blue, all right, because there needs to be...like maybe lyrics are not
able to convey your message of being free. Kevin: Um-hmm. Isaac: Cuz scatting, if you listen to,
there's a lot of French scatters. Listening to them,
it's very weird,
cuz you listen to the lyrics being sung, and all of a sudden they just go on a riff.
Kevin: Um-hmm. Isaac: Right? It's almost like a solo in jazz,
where they just like, they have their structure, but then they have, yeah,
maybe a bass line, and they just kind of flow on top.
So having the scatting was really liberating, and it was very interesting to have that texture.
Kevin: It's also cool where they placed the scatting, because they placed it, I think, somewhere after the first verse. Isaac: Um-hmm.
Kevin: And even,
like, I'm used to hearing scatting as sort of like an afterthought, like maybe near the end of a song, Isaac: Um-hmm.
Kevin: And if a scat section is badly placed it could sound like the the piece is just stalling for time,
Isaac: Yeah. Kevin: But here, we have a song that's
only a little above three minutes long, and yet they place the scat section right near the beginning,
where it feels almost crucial, and it almost is indicative of what the song is, to put the scatting there.
It describes the song and...what is it? Epitomizes it. Is that the word? I don't know,
I'm thinking of big words and it can't come up with them.
But it's it's one of those things where when you hear the scatting, you're like, ah, this belongs in the song.
This tells me what the song truly is about, and it's awesome, even
without knowing the lyrics. Isaac: Yeah. Kevin: You know?
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