[subtitles by twitter @angelade17] SAM: What the heck??
[Rossini's Semiramide overture plays]
KEVIN: Before we react to Golden Child, we would like to let you know that this video was made possible by our sponsor, Skillshare.
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KEVIN/OWEN: [off-sync] 3 2 1, go.
[still off-sync lol] Now let's move on to the reaction!
KEVIN: We gotta try again, my expression was extremely still. 3, 2 1. (OWEN: *laughs* My expression was also super- Wait-)
OWEN: Now let's move on-
KEVIN/OWEN: 3 2 1, go.
[in sync~] Now let's move onto the reaction!
SAM: There's only one lucid dream? Not two lucid dreams?
UMU: Well okay, so I think the reason why it's called "ONE" is because, well to summarize my script,
is um, this is the third of a trilogy in which they've been trying to like discover and learn about themselves.
In like the first one- here I'll just read my script, okay. *laughs*
You are now reacting to the 10-member boy group Golden Child and their 2020 release, "ONE (Lucid Dream)".
"ONE" is the third song of a trilogy in which the group has displayed a more mature sound, in contrast with their past brighter and youthful releases.
The first song of the trilogy was about trying to find and become the best version of yourself.
The second song of that trilogy is while on that journey, you lose yourself and start questioning your identity.
This third song continues that journey of self-discovery and paints out the land of reality vs dream, while still trying to become that perfect self.
The lyrics sing "Where am I, who am I. After a meaningless dream comes a meaningless peace, my undeniable dream-like present."
"The one I wanted, and lost. The one I was already looking for, now I'm done, open my eyes and woke up already perfect."
So basically they're saying that even if you're striving to find yourself and become the perfect person,
you might find that just yourself in the first place is who you wanted to be all along.
And this song is composed by BLSSD, and the Golden Child members Jangjun and TAG participated in writing the lyrics.
HENRY: 3 2 1.
HENRY: I love it. CHARLOTTE: *laughs*
CHARLOTTE: Spoopy.
SAM: Oh. Ohh.
HENRY: I like these sounds.
RAFFI: I wanna listen to this with like some subwoofers. SAM: Yeah.
RAFFI: Just feel the earth shake beneath me. (SAM: Like, listening to this in the car would be nuts.)
JASON: Woah.
JU YOUNG: What?
JASON: I like how they're panning the percussion kinda left and right.
JASON: Yeah I like that a lot actually, like the *makes percussion sounds*
JASON: Mmm!
JOSH: Mm. STEVE: Ahh.
RAFFI: Damn, what a voice.
(KEVIN: Oooooh!) HENRY: Ooh, ooooh.
SAM: This bassline is CRAZY.
What the heck?
HENRY: Strings?
The scaffolding is nice on this.
KEVIN: The texture's really simple. But I like that I can hear (OWEN: Everything.) how multi-dimensional it is. OWEN: Yeah.
JOSH: Time. The cat has time. STEVE: The cat has time.
STEVE: He's a tank. Augh!
JOSH: Ohh! (STEVE: Ayy!)
RAFFI: That was good text play, "upside down." SAM: Yeah!
JU YOUNG: Wow, okay go off. JASON: I guess that kinda accentuates the dream aspect of it,
JASON: that it doesn't need to be kinda like a structure. JU YOUNG: Like they're coming in and out of like the melody. (JASON: Well that's scary, he has a hand hole!)
HENRY: Oh that bass on this is, mm *claps* crispy!
KEVIN: The contrast of their falsetto and the bass, very nice. And then they add more.
JASON: And it's got a nice scalar rhythm going, *sings* JU YOUNG: *sings*
JU YOUNG:: I like how the strings are on the upbeat, it's like not on the downbeat like the percussion. (JASON: Don't step on the butterfly!)
JASON: No, don't cry!
JASON: *gasp* (JU YOUNG: Oh.)
JASON: That homie's dead.
HENRY: Ooh! I like this a lot!
CHARLOTTE: This is very old school. HENRY: What a cool change!
HENRY: Some riffing.
STEVE: This is a weird dream, man. JOSH: *laughs*
HENRY: Woahhh.
JASON: That was super effective.
JASON: Ayy! (JU YOUNG: Oh my god!) The dance breaks always go like rhythmically crazy.
STEVE: Oh-
He opened his eye.
JASON: That's kinda scary. Oh his lips, oh my god!
That was like, bubble gum. I could chew on those.
Okay, not me! Sorry! SHE can!
JU YOUNG: What did you say? (JASON: I didn't mean that!)
JU YOUNG: Wait what did you say? I was too busy, I was too busy watching- (JASON: That way, listen, that was-) UMU: JASOOOOON)
JU YOUNG: What did you, what did he say? (JASON: Not a Freudian slip.) UMU: (He said-)
JASON: SHE can do that, I just was- (UMU: He said, he said-)
JASON: Alright, I wish my lips looked like that, okay? (JU YOUNG: What did you say?) JASON: SHE can do that, I just was- (UMU: He said, he said-)
JASON: Alright, I wish my lips looked like that, okay? (JU YOUNG: What did you say?)
UMU: He said those lips look like bubble gum and he could chew on them. *Jason has left the chat*
JASON: [writing] I... didn't... mean it! JU YOUNG: Jason is there something you need to tell me?)
JASON: I didn't mean it! I was just saying, he's got some good lips!
JASON: I am confident enough to say that. He's got some great lips. (JU YOUNG: [laughing] I'm crying!)
UMU: You have a boy crush, it's fine. It's a normal thing. JU YOUNG: Yeah I have a ton of girl crushes, like-
JU YOUNG: It's fine. (JASON: Me too.)
HENRY: Dang that was fresh, that was fresh through the whole thing!
I really liked how they kept it fresh by like, the beginning where they layered on a lot of instrumentation, and then the choruses are different. Ooh, fresh!
CHARLOTTE: Did you think it was fresh, Henry? HENRY: Yeah I thought it was fresh.p
JAMAL: Hey that last scene was like yo, the boys, the crew with our fits.
It's- a disaster's out here but we look good, and there's- it's white clothes but like, a building has collapsed, but like there's no dirt- Wow.
But um, yeah it was a really cool piece.
Definitely a lot of like visuals about reflection and-
I like to think about like the butterfly in his hand, but like the building is crumbling,
so it's like, I guess it- the butterfly is like hope or something like that, or maybe like confidence or some shit.
And like, the house like shattering is like himself shattering in on himself. Everyone can relate to that in their own way.
RAFAEL: I also really liked the instrumental section. JAMAL: Yeah it was lit.
RAFAEL: Like from start to finish, the entire instrumental section was beautiful. (JAMAL: Yeah it was FIRE!)
RAFAEL: That section was so cool. Just bass drum, bass, and like a synth pad and like a really altered voice, I mean it was-
Like, I like the harmony there a lot. Yeah it was- it was a beautiful section.
JAMAL: And I guess it's a cool place to put it, because like the guy is like jumping out of the building and like everything's wild,
but like, we're like grounded with like, hey instrumental section, let's groove out. It's cool.
JASON: I find that they do that a lot, like in kinda the dance breaks, they have like a lot of um triplet play, in order to accentuate specific things.
They go into like uh, just like adding some sixteenth note, like *makes rhythm noise*
Like, just hitting it so that the dances are variant as well.
JU YOUNG: It reminded me of Daft Punk.
(JASON: Yes! Yes certainly.) JU YOUNG: When they had that- UMU: *sings*
JU YOUNG: Yeah! And I was so, I dunno why, but that made me happy.
JU YOUNG: 'Cause I used to do um what's it called, Just Dance, and I would do all the Daft Punk ones. (JASON: Do one right now.)
(JASON: Do you remember any of the moves? Do it!) JU YOUNG: What was, it was like-
JASON: C'mon, c'mon, oh on the docks! Let's go!
JU YOUNG: This was it. JASON: Oh that's it? JU YOUNG: Yeah.
JASON: Oh I was so excited for so much more.
STEVE: I liked the music video a lot. I also liked the song a lot. I liked a lot about this. It was very cool.
UMU: Can you hash me out some deets? STEVE: Well the bass player was-
STEVE: Hopefully- I dunno if it's a bass player, but the bass player, the- that groove was really killing.
They, they hit all the Steve and Josh points, like they didn't do the same thing the whole time,
they got to places differently, the progression was cool, you know like, it was just a killing song.
And they had whales and jellyfish, and yeah.
JOSH: Yeah I really, I dug it. The whole idea behind it and just like the way they got to certain places.
And like the one thing that I really dug was how they did the chorus, where it's like a completely different feel from like the beginning,
where the beginning's like, kinda dance-y and like, a lot's going on in the like um beat.
But then it like kinda just breaks down to the bare necessities of like, what's good about the song,
JOSH: which is the message and the chorus, and like- (STEVE: Groove.) and the groove, yeah.
JOSH: So it's just like, it just breaks down to the bass and the vocals with the little distortion on it, which was awesome.
And yeah, it just like, I love how the chorus was so bare and simple, because it didn't-
If you added any more musical ideas, it would have almost taken away from it, if that makes sense.
STEVE: Strong melody and strong singing with, with depth of groove.
JOSH: Yeah. Like, my whole thing is like: If it's good, don't add things to it.
STEVE: When you're making red sauce, you don't put oregano in it. Because that's just not something you do.
And if you put oregano on a song, it makes it not good. So just the red sauce, you know, tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, garlic.
JOSH: Or you can be like, you go to Wegmans. (STEVE: Yeah.) And you buy the Wegmans sauce.
JOSH: And you don't care what they think. You don't care, they look at you funny, you take that sauce and you make it.
KEVIN: It ends a little earlier than I expected, but I like it. I like the way it ends a little earlier.
I think some- sometimes you gotta do more with less. And I think they did.
They knew what they wanted the song to be, and it never- it never got very dynamically loud or extremely complex or just yeah, dense.
It- it kept it very lean, and I really appreciated it. This could be up there, this could be the best Golden Child song I've heard so far.
UMU: Charlotte you mentioned during the track that yeah there is this strange contrast of like the instrumental being so heavy.
(UMU: But, you wanna continue on that or like what else did you think about that?) CHARLOTTE: Yeah. I just thought it was an interesting take,
CHARLOTTE: 'Cause I think you usually are used to pairing them both to being similar, you know, if we have a hard-hitting um-
If we have a hard-hitting instrumental then we tend to have more hard-hitting vocals, or at least something that matches in timbre.
But I think it was an interesting pairing to have them so soft-spoken in everything that they're doing, and then let the instrumental kinda carry it in a way.
OWEN: Well I, so something that stood out to me was that- that one section right before they went back into the verse.
And it was sort of, and that- it happens a lot in K-pop, that sort of like up in the air, we don't know exactly where we're going, and then it kinda brings back down.
But they did it in such a way where it felt like sounds were being recorded in reverse, it was kind of that *makes reverse sound* you know, that sort of thing.
But just that sound and the general vibe I think of that section felt like the music was going backwards, and sort of coming into focus.
And then, and then it could go before it again. You know?
And I thought that was really interesting uh because I've been reading about Webern's Symphony, Opus 21,
and how like you can play with tone rows and the retrograde inversion, and sort of play with like space in both horizontal and vertical fashion.
And just like, compose musically in so many different directions throughout time. Which I thought was pretty cool.
JU YOUNG: I feel like there were a lot of unexpected things, like especially when he started to rap, I wanted-
My mind was unconsciously like "Oh he- there's gonna be a, there's gonna be the breakdown part", like-
I dunno why, but "Superhuman" comes up, because when, there was this-
There's a part in that where the, where the beat like breaks down, that's what I expecting with like that strong beat.
JU YOUNG: But then there was no beat. And just, I dunno that just kinda like surprised me, I was like what's- (JASON: Yeah, I thought that was cool.)
(JU YOUNG: Hello? Hello?) JASON: I wasn't even thinking about that, and when you brought up that up I thought that was really cool.
JASON: Because I think that they're- the song I guess that's kinda like talking about like in dreamscape reality, like there's kind of a structure but not really a structure, (JU YOUNG: Yeah, like-)
JASON: So it's kinda like lucid, in a sense.
RAFFI: I thought it was super unique. If you're gonna tell me I was going to listen to a song about a dream, I'd be like ok it's gonna be light and fluffy and ethereal.
And it's just like no, there was like that constant bass the whole time. And when it would drop out, that would be effective too.
And there was a lot of like playing with, playing with the vocal line and when it faded in and out,
and um it definitely was dreamy, but in a unique way. Like, not in your average kind of dreamy song.
STEVE: Did you see that? He covers- covered his eye.
JOSH: Wait what's Illuminati? Is that the pizza shop in Chicago? STEVE: No, that's Lou Malnati's.
JOSH: Aw that's a great pizza though. STEVE: Great pizza.
UMU: But you know what pizza has? STEVE: Cheese?
UMU: Triangles. JOSH: Triangles. UMU: You know what triangles mean...
JOSH: Ohh... STEVE: Illuminati. UMU: ILLUMINATI!