[Rossini Semiramide Overture playing]
Umu: So you are now reacting to the main vocalist of EXO,
you've also seen him perform with SuperM,
and this is one of the guys Ju Young screams over.
Ju Young: My vocal king!
Jarod: One of the daddies of K-pop.
Daniel: Hohoho, would you say he's just a daddy or like...
Daniel & Umu: The daddiest?
Jarod: I would say one of the daddies,
I feel like the daddy of all daddies is like definitely RM or Jungkook,
Umu: Yeah... RM, I vote for RM. Daniel: Okay. Jarod: As far as like straight, like giving, you know, birth.
Daniel: Yeah, as a daddy.
Daniel: Giving birth... Jarod: As a daddy, or maybe just like causing birth.
Umu: Well actually one of the EXO members did have a child,
so I think he needs to be up there too, his name is Chen.
Umu: This is a b-side song released on his 2021 'Bambi' album,
the lyrics are about the power of love that captivates a person.
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Now to finish the reaction's intro script.
Baekhyun sings:
"Yeah, can you give me half of your heart?
I won't ask you to give me everything
You are the owner of this love
All I need is you and your love"
This song is composed by Tone Stith.
Raffi: Let's give it all we've got!
Umu: All we got! Baekhyun!
Sam: ~Three, two, one~
Raffi: ~One!~
Jarod: Ha, listen to this beat.
This is a daddy beat!
Daniel: Yeah, honestly.
Daniel: Oho- Oh- Jarod: This is what I'm saying, right?
Jarod: This is what I'm saying. Ju Young: OKAY!
Henry: Blow my mind at the beginning, won't you?
Jarod: Ah, talk to me! Daniel: Oh yeah.
Rafael: That's an electronic drum set for sure.
Jamal: Yeah
Jason: Okay, that organ in the back is really nice,
with the electric piano and this guitar pattern.
Jarod: I'm listening, I'm listening...
Jason: The funk guitar? Ju Young: It's like honey to my ears.
Jason: And that echoed ambience on the guitar too.
Raffi: Oh
Raffi: mmm smooth
Raffi: *mouths* SO MUCH HAPPENING
Jason: Oh yeah, that just arpeggiation in the bass,
ooh, ooh...
Henry: Jesus...
Rafael: Sounds like something you would sing.
Jamal: Haha.
Jason: Good harmony.
Sounds like there's a female harmony on there too, singing.
OH!
*Sings line*
There's a really - ugh -
a really nice like church organ synth on there.
So nice.
Jamal: Oh!
Raffi: All praise.
Sam: Oh my GOSH, that run! Raffi: MMmmmM.
Jarod: OkAy!
Daniel: Damn.
Jarod: Alright!
Ju Young: I can't tell if that's head voice or if it's like,
if he's belting or if it's chest voice, like...
DAMN!
Rafael: Also just the production on the vamp, it's just like...
pretty well orchestrated, like from event to event,
like even though it's just...
like an 8 bar vamp.
Jarod: I love the fluid motion of the background chords,
it's not solid blocks, it's like very fluid, (Daniel: Right)
overlapping, like,
Daniel: In flux. Jarod: Fish in a stream.
Jason: Oh!
Ju Young: This whole a capella section is getting to me!
Jason: Oh, that-
Henry: Why does he keep going higher?!
Daniel: Mmm~
Jason: Ugh!
Ju Young: Wohow!
Daniel: Wow...
He's hot.
Raffi: Don't talk to me, sing to me!
Jeez, why would I want you to talk?
You just keep singing.
Raffi: Yes Lord. Sam: Wow!
Jason: SICK!
Ju Young: Wow~
Jason: That was fire.
Ju Young: I DIDN'T expect this from him, but I DID expect this from him.
You know what I mean?
First of all, his voice does just not change,
it only gets better.
His voice sounds so similar to like 'Growl' era,
I guess, it sounds exactly the same,
which means that he has a style, he knows his voice,
but it just gets better and he's able to embellish,
with like riffs and everything so well,
and his range is just crazy,
well, we all knew his range was crazy...
Umu: What elements of this song made you like:
"Yeah, this works for me"?
Charlotte: I think I just, well I don't know,
it's just really nice listening to someone that can actually sing,
and well.
Like not that you ever show us people
cuz I don't think they go into the K-pop industry if they can't sing, first off,
but when someone is like extraordinarily talented at it, it's cool.
He tracks all of his own vocals.
You can tell.
Umu: Yeah.
Charlotte: That's impressive,
that he is adding harmonies and layering it in,
and that's just him, standing in the studio, doing that,
and hearing all of those things and how it's gonna work together.
Ju Young: You know, as simple as the instrumental is,
definitely, like what you said before, like his voice just makes it...
a thousand times better.
Rafael: Whoever produced this did a great job of like,
layering in different textures in the background,
so there were some string pads at one point,
and then at one point, like at the peak of the song,
it was him singing and then him riffing over it,
and then there is also a piano soloing,
and then there's also the fake bass playing some fills,
I think all of this is MIDI keyboard.
That'd suck if it was real and they're like,
"Oh dang, this music snob think it's fake"
but anyways, it was the same harmonic content as at the beginning
when it was just like keys, bass, drums,
and just like there it was a great instance of like...
of just using orchestration to highlight what's important,
rather than using new compositional material to highlight what's important.
so rather than having some kind of
written out thing that builds up into the verse,
they use textures to build up into the verse.
Jason: This was, like, mesmerizing.
Jason: He's the Daniel Caesar of K-pop.
Ju Young: Yes! Jason: He's the Daniel Caesar of K-pop.
Ju Young: That's what I was thinking!
Ju Young: He's the Daniel Caesar of Korea! Jason: Fantastic. Um...
Jason: I- like through the video I kinda talked about the textures
of like how many things were layered,
but I think something that's harder to hear
that I just kinda went through, is,
I think one of the most powerful usages of sound that they did with this
was the- yes, the vocal harmony,
but through the verses and even the chorus,
that church organ synth that was in the beginning
is laying out the chord progression
almost panned left and right sometimes
underneath all of these layered sounds.
And it's just kind of there to make the sound much denser
and to like accentuate where we are in the progression,
and then that, along with the vocal harmony,
made it this just, this...
ugh, this transcendent,
ugh, this transcendent, effervescent,
ugh, this transcendent, effervescent, just quality of, of...
godliness.
It was gorgeous, it was very pretty.
And that's the thing, it's what it should be evoking
because this is very reminiscent and inspired by the gospel style,
you know, R&B and...
R&B and this has a lot of tinges of funk in there too
but a lot- most of these progressions do come from the gospel style and genre
and so it's paying homage to that style of music.
Jamal: For me it sounded like,
you know this guy obviously checked out a lot of R&B,
which was cool.
I was into it but I felt like it wasn't necessarily -
I don't wanna say this term, but like...
convinced that he was really like feeling everything that he sang
because I feel like he was having these really high riffs,
and it was like, yeah, that's cool, but
I felt like it happens so often to where it's like,
What's the purpose of this?
Why are you just adding this in right here?
Cuz when you hear like actual R&B,
when they're doing those riffs it like,
there's a lot that goes into why that's happening there.
Especially with D'Angelo.
Cuz he can really sing, which is really cool,
I just felt like as far as just the emotion and honesty aspect of it,
I wasn't really connecting with because
I felt that he could have had more of a gradual build
into what he was doing, or...
Rafael: I was gonna say, it came in too early.
Rafael: like, the riffing came in too early. Jamal: Yeah, or just, just like,
Jamal: When he first came in I was like,
"Okay, you're just doing this cuz you can show us that you can,"
rather than there is a real purpose and meaning behind it.
Jarod: Everything was just, it was just a pure display of...
this man's
this man's god-given
this man's god-given talents
and you know, of course what he's developed it into cuz it's like,
when you hear him go that high into his range that early on,
you know he's not holding anything back,
ain't playin, no gains.
I think my favorite part was like towards the end
where you have all these different lines interweaving,
you have the keyboard fluttering in textures,
you have the background vocals not doing like block chords,
everything is kind of like flowing and entering and like it...
it was very like fluid,
like the drums and the beat exist to keep it all together,
but I loved how playful and interactive all the lines were.
Daniel: You know what that reminds me of?
That was so beautiful, you know like in baroque music?
like fugues. (Jarod: Yes, fugues!)
Or like you know, this idea of polyphony, interdependent voices,
voices that can be independent on their own,
you know, you could just bring out one of those voices and be like:
"That's the song!"
and you're like: "Great!"
But he adds in different voices and they're all strong.
Jarod: That's a great way to put it, actually,
Jarod: that's a really great way. Daniel: Yeah, it's like this tapestry,
Daniel: like embroidery, it's just all these things coming together.
You don't know where it's going but it feels really good, it feels beautiful.
Jason: But his vocal runs-
I'm not gonna say anything because we have vocalists to say things-
.
. .
. . .
Sam: Oh my gosh!
I feel like 90% of that reaction was like not even words.
Raffi: Yeah, I just went through...
extreme hormonal changes.
I think it's super effective!
Because you know, you're saying, "I'm gonna give you all I got"
and there is a few different ways you could go about that,
you know, like high belts; long, sustained belt;
just speaking it, you know, or-
like there is so many different ways, but to choose to riff...
...makes sense.
I feel like that's a really cool choice
in expressing how he is feeling.
Yeah, that felt a lot like just a b-track and you freestyle over it,
like for freestyle rap cd,
but instead of just laying out bangers and bars,
you're just laying out riff after riff after riff
after a high note after a high note,
I didn't feel like we got a break from a high note that entire time,
he was sitting way up in his high tessitura the entire time
and it felt painful,
to like have to support your breath like that the entire time,
but he's got it, he's got the chops.
And holy crab...
Again, I don't feel like I could have br-
I didn't feel like I could breathe until after that.
Umu: He literally stole your breath?
Henry: No, he was like holding my breath for me the entire time. Umu: Yeah yeah, he like took it and just held it.
Henry: Like, "I'm gonna give this back after I sing."
Umu: Yeah.
Raffi: I also noticed a lot of phrases he would fall off at the end,
like conversationally,
which I think was super effective too.
Umu: Like for me this is,
I recently watched a video where another vocalist talks about,
you need to pick the right moments to add your ad-libs and your riffs,
but this was just constant riffing.
Raffi: Mhm.
Umu: And it also, in your guys' mind,
was successful in conveying emotion in the message,
and it wasn't too much?
Raffi: Well, that's the thing though, I mean like,
when there is this much riffing,
I mean I always care about the message,
but when there is an instrument like that, like a voice,
you're just listening to the instrument.
They could be singing anything.
Umu: OH! This is like a cadenza...
in a solo.
Raffi: Yeah. Umu: This is literally just the cadenza of the album
where you get to show off.
Daniel: There is a certain type of like luxurious quality to his voice,
you know, and his ability to just scale up and down,
you know, like...
like the widest imaginable range for the male voice,
and just really like hit all of those like,
those really like, those luscious notes.
It was just like this sense of rocking back and forth,
there was no sense of urgency, it was just like,
"I'm here, you know?
And I'm sexy,
and you're gonna listen to me."
And I'm like, "Okay..."
"I will."
Jason: I could put him up for his money.
How high does he go in this?
C6?
Umu: Yeah.
Jason: Pff, I can't do that for sh*t!