Charlotte: "To be, or not to be"
Henry: Are we, are we gonna do this?
Charlotte: No, we're not doing it.
Henry: But you were a theater kid?
Charlotte: I was a theater kid, but no.
Henry: You don't want to?
Charlotte: No I'm not gonna subject these people to that.
Absolutely not, Henry, and I'm not -
Charlotte: NO, Henry Dean! Henry: "To be, or not to be..."
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture playing]
Henry: Funny story, ReacttotheK, I auditioned for acting class
in my freshman, and I didn't know what kinda -
like they said "pick a monologue", and...
Charlotte: DiD yOU PiCK HAMLET?
Henry: I picked this monologue as a 14 year old
cuz I don't know anything else.
I don't know, I didn't do theater in middle school.
So here is 14 year old Henry, trying to do "To be, or not to be",
a monster of a monologue / soliloquy from 'Hamlet',
and in the middle I forget my words.
And I try to start over and I can't remember anything,
then I stop and I say, and I apologize, and I sit back down
and they're like: "It's okay, it's okay, you're fine."
And I still ended up in Acting 2 and not Acting 1, and I was like "Holy shee",
I so got saved there,
because I think the teachers saw how much I cared about it,
even though I completely screwed it up.
And I worked so hard to memorize that, too,
I spent so many hours on it and still - I just screwed it up.
Fun story.
Umu: All right, you'll be comparing 'Come Back Home' to 'To Be Or Not To Be',
Ju Young: That's your quote!
Jason: That IS my quote.
Ju Young: That's his quote! Umu: it's your quote,
Umu: which is a sequel to 'Come Back Home'.
So as suggested by its title, the song is about the uneasiness
that comes from having to make a choice between two options.
While the play 'Hamlet' can be noted for its take on the idea of love,
this group has more so utilized its main message on life and death.
The lyrics expand on the metaphor of a past lover,
symbolizing pain and death while letting her go,
another tough choice will ultimately bring her life.
The songs title then directly pinpoints the core dilemma:
To be or not to be, meaning to live or to die,
also meaning to let her go or to die in her memory.
The music video relies more on dark fantasy and mythology,
ONEUS continue their roles as monarchs,
the two story films briefly elaborate on the process of
how the necklace seen in this music video
preserve humans' and the monarchs' souls,
but Helios is triggered again due to the loss of his son
and bestows the worst curse on them as well as being asleep for 100 years,
so this music video starts with them waking up from that 100 years rest,
Jason: After all of this? Umu: and...
Jason: I'm sorry. Umu: ...yeah.
Umu: They are struggling to defy the curse that'll warrant them
to kill the very child that they need to protect.
Ju Young: So this is Harry Potter and they are trying to find the Horcruxes,
Ju Young: kind of, like the, yeah the necklace is like the Horcrux? Jason: The necklace. What does the necklace do?
Umu: So this is like a crossover of, ehe,
(Jason: Take life?) Umu: So this is like a crossover of, ehe,
Umu: So this is like a crossover of, ehe,
Umu & Ju Young: Twilight and Harry Potter
Ju Young: Okay, cuz like the sun... and Shakespeare. Jason: And Lord of the Rings, because of the hills that are in the back.
Ju Young: I love this! Umu: ...and Shakespeare.
(Stephen: Dang) Umu: Trigger warning, there will be gun shooting and blood and stuff,
Is that okay or should I show you the audio?
Stephen: Yeah that's fine with me,
I was watching "Call of Duty" before I came over here, so...
Umu: The song is composed by RBW producers
이상호 (Lee Sang Ho), 서용배 (Seo Yong Bae),
코스믹 사운드 (Cosmic Sound), 코스믹 걸 (Cosmic Girl),
이후상 (Lee Hoo Sang) and 밍키 (Mingkey),
and once again the members RAVN (레이븐) and Leedo (이도)
contributed to writing the lyrics.
Raffi: Cool.
Stephen: If you get scared, I'm here.
Steve: Will you hold my hand? Stephen: Yes.
Steve: So where's the necklace?
Or are they IN the necklace?
Stephen: I just wanna say, shout out to Hercules,
for teaching me everything I ever needed to know about Greek mythology.
Steve: What is going on?
Kevin: Oh, we have...
WOW, that played with my head a little bit.
Owen: I liked entering with that minor chord around the third.
That was cool.
Henry: I like the groove a bit more. The guitar, the snaps.
Ju Young: Wow! Wow, his voice!
Henry: That bass is ...
NICE.
A really nice sound.
Kevin: Woo!
That's nice, *sings descending line*.
Cloud: Triplets?
Henry: They kept the big beat, so they're just putting triplets on top.
Ju Young: AH! Digge digge digge...
Jason: Triplet - 16ths, triplet -16ths - 8ths, trip- yeah.
Sam: Oooh, you hear those vocals in the back, like the Oooo's?
Oh and they cut everything out.
*Cloud singing along to triplets*
Cloud: Wwwoww!
Kevin: Daft Punk? Owen: That's fun, like a vocoder song?
Henry: Ooh, verse 2 starts STRONG, slap me up!
Steven: Leedo!
Ju Young: Wow!
Wow!
Raffi: Wow, that is intense.
Sam: Yeah.
Sam: Ooh, do you hear the percussion? It's like Boom boom boom boom!
That hits hard.
Henry: Triple pre-chorus?
*counts triplet*
Add on bass underneath.
Kevin: Uh nice, another - ah that drop shot is just great.
But yeah, the song feels so light.
Like if you hadn't seen the music video you would never tell...
(Owen: Yeah) But I guess that's the magic of K-pop.
Ju Young: Are those thumbs? I'm...
Ju Young: This is stressing me out, are those- Jason: Wait, am I supposed to be seeing something right now?
Ju Young: Oooh, I thought it was Jason: Oh yeah, like he was holding a skull
Ju Young: just like... Jason: yeah
Jason: A jester...
Steve: Oh, there's the necklace!
Where's the boss coming?
Ah!
Owen: Are they fighting each other over the necklace?
Kevin: Oh yeah, let's go!
Brianna: "Light!" - Who...?
Kevin: Is it like the whole thing -
never mind.
Ju Young: Wait, but they're vampires. They technically don't die. Jason: Yeah, so they can't die, right?
Sam: Woo.
Raffi: Wow.
Sam: WWOOWW!
Kevin: WOW!
Did they not die cuz they are vampires th-
WOW, this is so played out!
Oh, THIS is cool!
Owen: Yeah, I like the triplet.
Sam: This music video is insane.
Raffi: There is so much detail to think about.
Sam: Yeah, for real.
Brianna: Ugh.
Cloud: I always think it's done, and it's never done.
Ju Young: *sighs*
Is there a third one?
Jason: Okay...
Brianna: Nay.
I feel like this should be a movie.
Sam: Wow. That was really cool.
Stephen: Well, (Steve: Oh yeah.)
that was probably the weirdest K-pop music video
I have ever seen in my life,
but the music was dope, the music was super dope.
Kevin: That major thing at the end,
Owen: I liked it a lot. Kevin: the major third, yeah, it reminded me,
there is actually a part in the song where there's a little bit
*vocalizes*
Owen: Yeah, it was like an F~ Kevin: Or was that the previous song, which one was that?
Kevin: They're blurring.
Owen: I don't know.
Kevin: I think it was this one.
Kevin: Where it suddenly went *vocalizes*, it went to ♭2. Owen: There was a major triad. It was kinda weird.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah. Owen: There was like an augmented second somewhere in it.
Owen: I loved the outro.
Like the, it was like a distorted guitar and then like a wub-sy bass,
that was kinda cool, and just those two timbres playing off each other
like *demonstrates*, that was a good combination.
I thought that was a really cool color.
Sam: I think I liked that one more than the other one,
than 'Come Back Home',
just because I felt it was as much of a song as it was a narrative,
and melodically and harmonically speaking
I could just pick out so many parts where I was just thinking:
Wow. That's like really cool.
I loved the- how they filled the space with the robotic harmonies,
almost like Daft Punk-esque (Umu: Vocoder), yeah(x4),
but I really enjoyed that, both the song and that video.
Kevin: If we're just gonna talk the video for one second,
I did like how the whole, the main sort of setting they were singing in,
it turned, like when the people with the guns showed up,
it's like that sense of security that we had just kinda got lifted
and I did like that, it was like:
Oh, this is the part where they're just, you know, doing the regular dance -
NO, people come in here, and they're about to shoot them,
that setup was really good, the execution was... was, was
Owen: "The execution" Kevin: was funny. Pretty - OGH NO!!!
Umu: AAA!
Henry: I always hate people show like people surrounded with guns,
on the same plane, because if you have a gun guy shooting this way
and a gun guy shooting that way you're gonna kill each other!
So if you wanna surround someone you have to be elevated. (Charlotte: Is that why you were laughing?) I was laughing, I'm like...
Charlotte: You've given this a lot of thought, Henry.
Henry: I have. I've played a lot of video games.
Umu: This song continues their motif of triplet usage,
but except now they throw in more duple.
Do you wanna talk about that and how it plays with the energy of the song?
Jason: Yeah, go ahead.
Ju Young: I feel like the variety of like percussion and rhythm
and switching from duple to triplets and then to like sixteenths,
I feel like that drives the whole song.
You know when you're listening to songs that go like:
Dun.
Dun Dun Dun Dun
Dudududu - it builds up energy, and - yeah, (Jason: Diggediggedigge - BWUOAH)
and then like the beat drops (Jason: BOOM!)
and it's just kinda satisfying to the human ear.
Jason: When something gets more - like innately to the human nature,
when something gets more intense the heart beat goes:
gets faster and faster and it's anticipatory,
Jason: and so that's kind of... Ju Young: "...It's beating for you; listen to my my heart,"
Umu & Ju Young: "...it's beating for you"
[singing 2PM - 'Hearbeat']
Sorry.
Jason: Like when your heartbeat, I mean fight or flight situations,
it's like this anticipatory thing, like what the f**k is gonna happen -
sorry, I've got to stop cursing,
what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen, and so -
I mean like Prokofiev uses rhythm a lot,
even in his Shakespearean works, like I think it's 'Romeo and Juliet',
[t/n: Go check out Прокофьев and his ballet 'Romeo and Juliet'!]
Like a lot of different rhythmic things that get faster,
to anticipate like an intense thing to come,
and then when we're chill, things are like, we're in the verses,
it's like duple, more.
Cloud: I know they definitely had eighth note triplets
because it was tri-pa-let tri-pa-let...
but I wanna say that they definitely had some 3:2 in there, with the:
[Mad finger snapping skills of 3:2]
like, it was a little slower, it was a lot slower than that,
but it was really cool cuz it makes me feel a little unsettled
and like Hughhhuh~, like it just gives you that little lopsided
cuz you don't know which groove to go with,
but I love when they do that, that's so cool -
I just love triplets in general.
Umu: Yeah, I was gonna ask your opinions on
switching from the triple to the duple to the triple,
and what like mood or energy...
Stephen: To be honest, when I got to that part I was like:
There's so much blood right now...
Kevin: I think the last one really worked,
but I don't know if it makes the previous few work better for me.
I liked that the last one was different, again, it made the whole-
the, with the vocal effect work better as well, but the previous -
it feels way to barren, cuz I think they do do a shuffle beat in the verse,
and then they do the *vocalizes* which was (Owen & Umu: Pre-chorus) - yeah,
which I liked the transition back to duple, the *imitates*,
there is some fast sort of subdivisions in there.
It feels a little light, you know? It feels very, yeah, a little...
bubbly, as bubbly as this kind of mood can be,
and then when the second shuffle beat comes in after that
it just feels more like a rehash. Yeah.
But still, I like this song more than the other song.
It felt more grounded by the end.
It felt like the bigger picture it was painting was clearer.
Henry: I know why I am like particularly pissed of about the chorus.
It's a dumb theater thing - I am a little - (Umu: You are?)
Syllabic stress.
(Charlotte: Aaaah!) because Shakespeare writes all his plays with an iambic pentameter
(Charlotte: Nerd!) and this line, "To be or not to be",
is meant to be syllabically stretched that way.
Weak - strong - weak - strong - weak - strong,
to - Be - or - Not - to - Be,
and they're going "To be - Or - Not to - be",
it's like sixteenth and an eighth, quarter, triplet.
"To be or not to be" and the syllabic stress kinda irks me,
but that gets me everywhere,
just because I've been so conditioned, as a vocalist,
to respond to appropriate syllabic stress
that when I see it not quite fitting in right
it irks me because of my training.
But I think they pull it off pretty well.
Oh, I was gonna say, you gotta watch this with headphones on,
because that part of the chorus, they pan between left and right,
and up and down so it has a spacial for it.
So, listen with headphones on.
Umu: Do you guys prefer 'Come Back Home' or 'To Be Or Not To Be'.
Steve: I liked the guitar to this one, in the beginning Stephen: Yeah, the guitar in this one was cool, I liked the first one,
Stephen: just cuz the chorus.
(Umu: "Come back home...") Jason: Definitely the other one.
Ju Young: Probably the other one,
I feel like the story was also more compelling in the first one,
I don't know why...
Henry: I liked that one a lot more.
Umu: Why?
Henry: No wub-wubs.
I thought the groove was better.
Charlotte: Yeah, I mean the flow of the whole thing is better.
Henry: Listening to both songs has shown me
that their intuition of rhythmic flow is consistent,
because they used meter or time feel changes pretty sensibly
to, in between sections, cuz for this one you had
them going between triple and duple meter with the same macro beat,
the same big beat, pretty easily, and I liked how that felt.
Raffi: I love both, I thought this, to me this felt a lot darker
than 'Come Back Home', and I think maybe
musically it's because it was like more -
like the voices were muffled at some points and like,
it made sense why, and then digital distortion,
it was just a little louder and more intense.
I loved, in particular, the text setting.
When the pre-chorus would like lead right into the chorus,
I think it was the pre-chorus, I'm not really good with the names,
but it was like "dead" or "alive", that was the one word
that they like started the whole chorus with,
and it created a really cool contrast.
There's so much detail,
(Sam: There's so much detail.) I'm blown away because it's, the story telling and having like,
to keep things in order and oh my goodness. Wow.
Sam: I feel like this is the type of video, or these are the type of videos,
where you can just keep watching them and learn something new
about the song, about what's happening in the video,
about like different backstories within the video,
I think that's just, I think that's really cool.
*Umu and Ju Young singing*
Ju Young: Sorry.
Jason: Good.
Jason: What. Just happened? Ju Young: Nothing, nothing.
Jason: Okay. Umu: 2PM - 'Heartbeat'!
Jason: I always feel so left out.