Kevin: The strings emphasize the major-ness!
[chorus hits]
Kevin: WWwwooOOoooO!
[Rossini's Semiramide Overture playing]
Umu: Before journeying to Atlantis, we wanted to let you know
that we were able to film and edit this video
thanks to our Patreon.
Since we are unable to monetize
any of our react videos uploaded to this channel,
it is our Patreon that provides us the funding
to continue making our channel bigger and better.
We have a lot of interesting and exclusive content uploaded to our Patreon
which includes uncut reactions to this song,
reactions to Japanese releases, live stages, games and more.
Now let's get this reaction started and follow SHINee deep -
[Song:] "deep, deep, deep..."
Ju Young: This is SHINee again!
Uuuh!
Umu: You are now reacting to the boy group SHINee
and the title track 'Atlantis' (Henry: look at that fish!)
Umu: off of their 2021 'Atlantis' repackage album. Henry: I feel like we're in the same grocery store
Henry: where you bought the hot sauce! (Umu: Right?)
Kevin: This first frame is so weird,
it looks like it should be in an aquarium shop or pet store
but it has cereal.
And the font is really disorienting-
Kevin: LET'S GO! Owen: It's a very cool font.
Umu: The song compares falling in love
to journeying into an unknown territory
and gravity pulling you into a place where you can't escape,
the more deeply you dive into the ocean,
the stronger your love grows.
This song is composed by
Matt Thomson, Max Graham, James F. Reynolds,
Gabriel Brandes, Britt Pols, Engelina Larsen,
Changmo (창모) and Yoo Young Jin (유영진).
Ju Young: Changmo?
Umu: Yes.
...
Ju Young: Changmo?!
What are you doing here?
Damn!
Okay Changmo...
Henry: At-lan-tis!
AAH, I like.
Sam: Oh, that onset was very clean.
Raffi: I like it.
Charlotte: Is that two of him?
Umu: Yup.
Henry: Uh! Nice chromaticism.
Isolated vocals, layered on - wow, what a great growth.
Ju Young: Ah.
[t/n: They know their K-pop modal mixtures by now.]
Sam: His voice is very, very unique.
Raffi: Mm, very unique.
Owen: Oh, nice.
Kevin: OH! Owen: Major I.
Kevin: The strings emphasize the major-ness!
[chorus hits]
Kevin: WWwwooOOoooO!
Raffi: So much charisma, all of them have so much charisma!
Ju Young: SHINee is so good at this!
Oh my god!
Owen: C major. Kevin: Oh, Dorian versus natural minor!
Owen: Is it?
Kevin: It does Dorian first, and then it does natural minor.
Jason: Oooh~
Ju Young: See, this sounds...
YES!
*Jason mimicking guitar* (Ju Young: Yes!)
Jason: Nice!
Sam: This song seems really hard to sing, oh my gosh.
Raffi: He's almost intoning that rapping,
it was like almost in pitch.
Stephanie: Mm~
Sam: Wow, that intonation is crazy!
Cuz the first time it's a half step in between them,
the next time it's a whole step.
Raffi: It changes.
Sam: That's crazy!
*Owen vocalizes string line*
Kevin: Those, yeah, very brittle strings sound so good!
Owen: Yeah.
Kevin: That's a sentence I never thought I would utter. Owen: Well, there's something so satisfying about
Kevin: Oh! Owen: major - major - major!
Kevin: Hey, here we go.
Henry: *sound of approval*
Kevin: So, I already know the song is about to be over
and it makes me really sad.
But I wanna listen to it again, it's magic.
Raffi: Mm~
Sam: His voice is REALLY good.
Jason: They have that orchestra hit! *Imitates*
Ju Young: Oh, it's like *demonstrates*
It's Tom Misch~
Jason: Yeah.
Kevin: Solid outro.
Ohg!
Henry: That guitar is so sexy.
Ooohhhh!
Owen: Whoa!
Kevin: WWWOOOWWW!
Owen: Haha, that was-
Kevin: So it ends on a 4?
Henry: That is so good.
*Charlotte smacks lips*
*Henry sings guitar line*
*Charlotte smacks lips*
*Henry guitar~*
*Charlotte lip smack~*
*loling*
Henry: It actually kinda matches up, yeah. Is that like a fish going...?
Charlotte: No, it's just like when you have a good sip of wine
and you're like:
Henry: Ah. Dang! This was...
this was so good.
(Charlotte: Vocally clean.) Really good balance. I love how it started off,
clean vocals and then, right before we got into the verse,
like maybe two or three beats,
they layered on a bunch of vocal harmonies
and that just had like a huge growth of sound
Charlotte: I think that's what they do that's different from everybody else. (Henry: and then - BOOM! Yeah...)
Ju Young: If I had to say what SHINee was, this is SHINee.
Jason: *whispers* SHINee's back...
Ju Young: *stumbles over words*
Their genre is literally SHINee, I don't know what to call this.
Jason: That's funny.
Ju Young: Like, SpongeBob...
(Jason: It did give SpongeBob vibes.) Ju Young: Tom Misch, Michael Jackson, like...
Jason: SpongeBob, Michael Jackson and Tom Misch all had a baby.
Ooookay, nevere mind, that's...weird. (Ju Young: Oh, that's kind of...)
Umu: What about the chorus melody
makes you think it's difficult to sing?
Sam: So there are kinda two parts to that.
The first thing is where it sits in the register,
sort of that area, for baritones and younger voices,
is definitely not easy to sort of have clean onsets for.
The second thing, and more importantly,
is the intervals in between each of those pitches.
The fact that you're able to navigate through your passaggio
in order to get to those,
but also you're able to sing each of those descending lines
with a very s- with a very like short period of time,
and the fact that the first time it's a half step,
it's a D to C♯ to, I think afterwards it was a...
[doing perfect pitch things]
a B, or...
...
yeah, a B,
and then the second time was a D to a C to a B
or B♭, I can't remember which one.
The fact that you can have the different intervals for each one,
yet still maintain the integrity of the intonation,
is really impressive.
Raffi: I mean even for a tenor, I think what makes it difficult
is that you're in falsetto at the beginning
and then it's a descending melody line,
so the tendency is always gonna be to go flat,
because you're releasing into the chest voice,
and I would dare say it's even harder because this is a recording,
it's pretty hard to record that and get it right,
I mean there's always ways to help the voice in recording but...
based on the tonality and the timbre we hear here,
I doubt that that happens, like,
most of what you hear is what you would get live.
So it's, their voices are incredible.
Umu: And what did you guys like about the instrumental?
Raffi: I like how rhythmic it is.
Of course there was percussion but
a lot of the instruments drove it along.
Henry: And then there was that one part, I think in the second verse,
where there was just like a prolong,
couple measures of 8th note syncopations.
Stephanie: They used upbeats, they kept on using
*demonstrates*
but before that, and throughout this whole song,
it's so downbeat oriented for the most part
and just like grooving so hard, like that feel,
but at that one part they kept on using -
like building energy using that beat,
so that was cool.
I think just using the midi strings and the really deep bass,
it gives it like an underwater vibe, (Jason: Yeah)
I guess that's what they're trying to go for.
Stephanie: *imitating chorus synth*
Is there like a technical term for that sound?
Leon: It's like guitar mute?
Stephanie: Oh yeah.
Umu: Oh, specifically the guitar or the synth bass in the chorus? Stephanie: Oh, the synth, in the chorus.
Leon: Oh, in the chorus. I didn't pay attention to that.
Stephanie: Oh, both actually stood out to me, like,
the texture just felt really thick and deep,
deep from the bottom, for the chorus,
because of that synth...
It sounded like *imitates*
and that kinda reminded me of a whole ocean vibe.
Umu: Do you hear what we're talking about? Leon: Yeah yeah yeah...
Leon: They layer a bunch of things.
Like just by listening I can hear at least four layers.
There's a sub bass, which makes like,
oh, there seems like a lot of octaves,
and then there's like a saw-wave-thing
because that can make the thing stand out
because if it's all round then you cannot really hear it
so they double it just to make that stand out,
and also the pluck thing...
Everything is pretty standard, other than the arpeggiation thing
because that kinda represented the deep water.
Stephanie: I feel like this one did feel a bit different
from the other boy groups in terms of intensity,
I feel like the other ones that I've seen are really intense
with lots of just energy buildup with big drops and everything,
but I noticed that in this one there weren't things like that
but I still enjoyed it, it was like,
I think because of this whole ocean theme
and the music went along with that, yeah.
Kevin: It has all the qualities,
it sounds like it should be a solid SHINee b-side
but it somehow goes beyond it.
I feel like this is a total contrast to 'Don't Call Me'
where they, in 'Don't Call Me' they create a very
complicated and twisty experience,
this one they're just like:
"Okay, we gave you that,
now we're gonna give you the most straight-forward song
that still has some interesting things to chew on."
Like every time the chorus hits, I'm always shocked by...
Owen: The C♯?
Kevin: The C♯, that too, but it's the lack of transition,
how they just go straight into the chorus, I don't feel like...
Sure the pre-chorus gives some usual tension
but there isn't like that moment where things go quiet,
and then "BOOM" there's a drop.
Even for an upbeat song like this I'm used to something like that,
Like almost like: *sings pre-chorus from 'Uptown Funk'*
and then they let it, yeah, that tension,
there's not much of that, and yet I'm totally okay with it
cuz it feels like - know what it feels like?
Maybe it's with the music video, it feels like:
a splash of water on my face.
Owen: Sure.
Kevin: When they go into the "deep deep deep",
and then I like how when they do the C♮ version the bass is C.
Yeah, the first time I hear that, I heard the bass go to C and I'm like:
"Oh." Just like two seconds before it actually happened I'm like:
"Are they actually gonna sing it in natural minor this time?" (Owen: That was crazy.)
- and they did.
There was a lot of moments where I felt like I could anticipate things
but yet, things happened so quickly
that I couldn't quite formulate them, yet
- and they happen.
And so that, the game that the song played with me-
Owen: Game's afoot.
Kevin: -yes, was really really great.
Owen: I thought it was so playful, it was so fun, and like,
it's just that a cheerful, interesting, happy tune
that it kinda makes it sound like it's like this.
But no, it was interesting and just, I enjoyed listening to it,
I enjoyed all the timbres, I really liked how the percussion felt
and then also how the syncopations in the rhythm section,
high rhythm section instruments, kinda played with the percussion.
Kevin: I will say, they do the thing in the pre-chorus
that every song does nowadays,
where they go into the major third,
the modal mixture, in a minor song.
Jason: So it goes C major
B minor 7
to E major.
[The E major chord is the modal mixture] Umu: Yeeyyy!
Jason: YES!
Kevin: But what I liked in the first verse
that I don't think appeared in the second verse,
but that's cool cuz it's different,
But the first verse, there were some strings,
after it went into major third
they played some other notes from the E major scale,
almost validating it in a way that just
played with my ears a little more.
And I really liked that.
Charlotte: Yeah, clean.
Clean.
Umu: Clean.
*Lip smacking*
Charlotte: Tasty, you know?
Good wine.
Henry: This is just such an earworm, so catchy.
I'm definitely listening to this more, it's so so good.
Umu: You finish each other's...
Raffi: Sandwiches~
Sam: Hey Raffi, that's what I was gonna say.
[t/n: *Indescribable sound*]