Henry: I really like this
Daniel: Crush. Fiona: Crush. Daniel: Ooh! Oh!
Fiona: What? Daniel: Oh, my God, Crush!
Oh!
Oh, my God.
Oh, bless.
Dude, he's like, so good. Sorry. I just remember waking up, you know, like 6 a.m.,
going to the practice rooms, and I'm like, I'm gonna hit this really hard,
I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get some stuff done, you know,
and I'm walking over to the annex, and I'm listening to Crush. I'm like, I feel so good.
Umu: So now you're reacting to a solo R&B artist named Crush. Aaron: Hell, yeah! Umu: His newest single is the first release
from...ohhhh! Oh, true!
You know Psy? He's started a label. And so this is the first release from that label.
Aaron: No way! I'm dead.
Umu: So 'Nappa', which means "bad" in Korean, is basically an apology for being a bad boyfriend.
Henry: Oh, been there.
Umu: Crush thinks about how he's easily distracted and busy, leaving the other person feeling disappointed and hurt.
This song is composed by Crush himself, and a songwriter called haventseenyou.
Henry: He wrote this song about me.
Seiji: That is so relatable. Wow.
Stephen: All right, so Seiji's just opened up. Seiji: Hey, man, we're all of us musicians. Come on.
Umu: All musicians are bad boyfriends? Stephen: I don't wanna, I'm not gonna be a bad boyfriend. I don't wanna be a bad boyfriend.
Seiji: I'm working on it. I'm working on it, all right? It's always in progress. It's in progress. Man! Stephen: No, I care about you, you know? I like my girlfriend. She's awesome.
Isaac: Looks like he just took someone's bike. Bike theft.
Isaac: Oh, my goodness. This lo-fi hip-hop?
Fiona: I love that! Daniel: Ohh.
Daniel: Very R&B.
Oh, L.A.!
Sorry!
Oh, I miss you!
Aaron: They're like, settin' the mood.
Aaron: A little...Oh, my God. That was that 1-7-1paradigm.
Henry: Oh, I think this is Koreatown.
I think he's definitely playing on the Korean-American experience.
The LA...the California, smooth, chill.... Fiona: He's just like, brah.
Henry: Korean-American experience. I think that's what he's going for. Fiona: And it sounds chill, too.
Kevin: Nice scales.
I think the lo-fi energy is really working. Ooh! Gotta love Crush's falsetto.
I like the counter melody from that...what? Bass melody line?
Almost like a synth brass sound.
Aaron: (singing)
Nick: Is that a flat 6 there? (singing)
That's really nice.
Aaron: Gotta love it.
Fiona: I just love the piano in that, twinlkin' in the background.
Both: Eww!
Daniel: I'm like, ugh.
Fiona: Oh, I love that emoji.
Nick: I love...There's something about the songwriting of this that has a really regular phrase that I'm a big fan of.
Henry: I really like this.
Kevin: That's not what I was expecting.
I like it. It's like, chord, detour chord, back to where you expect.
Nick: I really like the singing in this one. Aaron: Yeah, he has a nice voice. Nick: I don't know exactly what it is about it that I like,
but
I think he's just really agile with going up and down just perfectly.
Stephen: What I like is
the rhythm that's going on that's, you know, like the repeating ostinato
that's just like establishing the groove. So he's broken, right, in the video?
At least you know, he doesn't look like he's himself, you know, he's sad and beaten up. It's really cool.
It's really cool how a lot of the times the groove in certain parts of the song
reflects that, to where they're using different sounds and textures, to where it's almost like they sound like different things,
but overall they're unified by whatever rhythm that they're playing. It's just a really cool effect to communicate that to the listener, I think.
Meanwhile
Elizabeth: I like the layering on the voices. Henry: Ohhhh.
Henry: Did somethin' kinda weird there.
Elizabeth: Is that a corgi?
Oh, my God, it's a corgy! Henry: Yessss!!
Henry: I love corgies so much.
Elizabeth: Oh, my God, look at his butt! Henry: He's got such a cute lil buuutttttt
Elizabeth: I love him!
Kevin: Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no, it's gonna be balls! He's gonna be puking balls. Oh, okay, never mind. It's not balls, it's... toys?
Aaron: What? Nick: What?
He seems okay.
Aaron: I'm confused.
Isaac: What is he doin'? Kevin: Is this burning by Lee Chang Dong?
Isaac: Wow, what a camera shot. Kevin: What a...
What?!
Henry: Now he feels good. Fiona: Like, what's up fam? I just barfed up a bunch of toys.
I feel great. Gang gang. Henry: It feels like that's symbolic of something.
Elizabeth: Aww. I like how there was a break and he kind of like,
realized,
and then the music texture completely changed, you know, once he was becoming more active. That's really cool.
Kevin: This is another Crush song?
Probably.
Henry: Oh! What is this song we're hearing now? This is some other part of the song.
Isaac: You took my bike?!
Kevin: Aww, he's gonna outrun him. We just don't get to see it.
Elizabeth: Oh, my God. Henry: Oh, my God. This song that he's playing after, this is like the credit song. This is also super good. Oh, my God! That was so cool!
He just started playing a totally different song that also slaps. That was so good. I feel bad.
I wanted to make more of an actual technical constructive analysis,
but the thing...my one of my favorite parts about the song was that it was
the perfect soundtrack to an awesome little short movie.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Henry: It was so great. Elizabeth: Yeah, it felt like a short film, almost. Henry: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Like the music was there to kind of tell the story.
And I think the way that they focused on the camera,
like him feeling like very deadpan while stuff is happening around him, like it's in a very effective
film technique, where your protagonist is feeling a certain way in the midst of something else.
So then at the end when we have the break and he looks directly into the camera and
then he becomes more involved, it's really effective. And then the music like really supplements that well. Henry: The thing I appreciate the most, I think,
about the production, is how subtle all the elements of it were. The drum machine was cool, it wasn't overbearing,
it wasn't really annoying. It just sounded like
he used chill 808 patterns.
I just think that the touch was really, really
thoughtful. I think all the parts that he fit together,
he thought about them a lot.
So, yeah, it was really good. It was really easy to listen to, which is really, really nice.
That's something that I've been thinking about a lot, is like okay, are people gonna hear this and it's gonna make their ears hurt, or
is it gonna make them
feel good? So, yeah, this definitely made me feel good.
Daniel: Oh, that's interesting. What did you think?
Fiona: It was chill. And it leaves me feeling like, hmmm.
That's it!
Daniel: I thought there was a lot going on. I think this is the first time I've ever seen something,
as a Korean American,
like seeing something along the likes of what
my story being in a K-pop video. Because most of the time it's very like
Korean national centric--those citizens, those people, and their stories. And so I thought this was very interesting, and it has a very specific
narrative, which is this Korean-American dude
who's clearly from LA, and he's kind of like, I guess, trying to fit in, there's something on his mind. And it doesn't
become released until he throws up all those toys. When he sneezes and we're like, huh, what's that? Fiona: Yeah!
And it was a toy.
So like, I guess there's something congested in him. Something along the lines that he wasn't fitting, in I guess, with his peers.
In relation to the music, it's such a chill
type of like, California sound, like you're lazing about, you know. Fiona: Just feel like I'm laying...
Daniel: Yeah, and you're just like soaking it up. Yeah, I definitely think that this
is like a testament to sort of the ethos that's going around, the musical ethos, if you can call it that, in Korea, which is
just like this R&B, feel good
type of
I guess like wave.
Kevin: I really like the music video, but musically, I think it's also a really good time.
I really like the drawn-out part in the middle. I don't even know, is that the pre-chorus or the chorus? The part that
Isaac: I think it's the chorus. Kevin: feels like the chorus to me the most is the bop bop bop bop.
I think the lo-fi thing really works because Crush has
appeared and also made a lot of songs that have that really shiny,
almost trap-like R&B sound and
I like the lo-fi. I think the lo-fi has more lasting power.
The percussion doesn't grate your ears from the synths as much, and sometimes that's welcome,
but this this one, everything just combines so well.
And then sometimes it gets jazzy, like at the beginning, and then other times it just becomes a
nice bed of
harmonies. Isaac: I was focused on,
yeah, just him singing more, because the lo-fi aspect just kind of became a bed--a nice futon, you just
sink into. And then listening to his
melody, it's very short--just da da da da da, da da da da da,
so small groups, and then in the chorus it's much more prolonged, and even the way he
sings notes is a lot more,
it's longer in the longer longer section. So yeah, his pacing was very,
very well used, because it still creates that calm atmosphere that is
emphasized by the lo-fi instruments. Kevin: Crush is still my crush.
Elizabeth: Also, there was a corgi! Henry: Also there was a corgi.