[Semiramide Overture - Rossini]
Umu: So, *evil chuckle*,
have either of you heard of the girl group Red Velvet?
Both: Yes.
Umu: You know Red Velvet.
Henry: Yes. Well, well...
Umu: And if you didn't then I'd-
[t/n: And we are rated PG-13 before the reaction even started, great...]
Umu: You are now reacting to Seulgi and her solo debut,
she is a member of the girl group Red Velvet
and this is her debut song called '28 Reasons'.
You may be wondering, why is this song called '28 Reasons'?
Well, fans theorize that this is 28 reasons
why you learn to love yourself,
or 28 reasons why you learn to love someone else,
cuz she's 28, she just turned 28 and she released the song and she's like,
"There's 28 reasons why I love you, and I want to mess with you."
She says that sometimes when you have a crush on someone as a kid,
as much as you care about them, you also want to mess with them,
and in this track it is a more mature version of that playfulness,
but it has gone to far, and you are gonna everything you can
to mess with the person you like. (Kayla: Mm)
When asked about this theme of good and evil, and why it was picked,
Seulgi replied, my fans have said that I have a big difference on and off stage,
I think through that we naturally come to the theme of good and evil,
I have other images inside of me that I want to show
and I think as plain Kang Seulgi I have shown a lot of my good side
so through my music I can show more of a darker side.
The song is composed by Sean Kennedy, Johan Fransson,
Henrik Goranson, 유영진 (Yoo Young Jin), Kriz, and IMLAY.
Liam: Alright, cool.
Umu: You're ready for good evil?
Rachel: Yes.
Liam: Good evil. Rachel: Good evil?
Liam: All of it.
Henry: 3, 2, 8!
You get it?
Umu: Yeah I get it, I get it.
Adam: Ooo~
Kevin: Oh goodness. Owen: Wow.
Rachel & Owen: Chains
Owen: And whips.
Owen: ...excite me. Na na na na~ Kevin: Da Vinci Code!
Liam: This doesn't look playful!
This looks like...bondage. (Umu: It's gone too far.)
Henry: I didn't like eye contact, I didn't like the eye contact.
Adam: Oooh~
I like this.
Henry: It's so bare.
Kevin: Woah, F♯.
Adam: Hmm. Kayla: Wow.
Will: Oh yeah that's cool.
Owen: I like this-
Kevin: Yeah, the scale down was- WoOh!
Jacob: I love being able to hear the low part of her voice.
Jacob: Oh my god I love this!
Kayla Rae: ...Into this.
Liam: Oh, the chromatic slide up to the F, that's cool. Rachel: It sounds like breaths.
Umu: Chills everywhere.
Jory: The bass sound is always changing, it's really cool.
Ali: The whistle. I f#%king love the whistle. Ju Young: I knew you were gonna say that.
Liam: It definitely cuts through a lot.
Jason: This is a really interesting song.
Adam: Okay.
Kevin: That's ASMR right there, wooo!
Ju Young: Oh, I like that.
Ali: I don't like the ASMR stuff.
Liam: Dragging with the chain along the ground.
Jason: It's so empty.
It's like a really - wow!
Jacob: Woooah. Kayla Rae: Okay,
Kayla Rae: Christina Aguilera moment.
Umu: There's a lot of contrast between wet and dry in mix in the vocals during the verse.
Liam: Oh, bass is a little fuzzier this time.
Kevin: Is the whistle more prominent this time?
Owen: I don't think it's more prominent.
Kevin: Or maybe it's panned different.
Umu: Very dark minor melody
and then, the higher belting.
Jacob: Oh my god, I love that part.
Owen: The thing that's really intriguing me
is the growling thing in the middle, like a *mimics*
Kevin: WOW!
Jory: Cool vocal melody.
Umu: Nice progression, same texture, cool.
Liam: Nice. Deceptive cadences.
Kevin: SO cinematic.
Owen: Yeah, this is very... Kevin: Big fan!
Kayla: Uh! Adam: Oh, okay!
Jacob: Oh my god!
Umu: OoOooOOOOOOoo... Jory: Yes. // Adam: Oh!
Umu: ...ooOoOOo... Ali: Very sultry.
Umu: ...ooOoOOo... Jacob: Oh my god!!!
Umu: ...ooOoOOoAAaAaaaAa... Adam: No way! // Kayla: Holy sh*t!
Umu: ...aaaAAahhhhhhHHHh! Kayla Rae: Oh!? // Liam: Alright...
Liam: Yeah. Adam: OKAY!!!
Ali: Damn Jacob: Purrrrr
Jason: That was really good.
That was really cool production on the arrangement.
Jory: Super cool vocals.
Umu: You ad-lib it! Ad-lib it, yes!
Kayla: She has delicate fingers.
Liam: I like the string patch too, it's nice.
Adam: Staring contest!
Go!
Oh.
*Jacob reading*
Adam: I thought that was bad ass.
I mean, what other song starts with:
"I kiss your brother"
Kayla: "I kissed your brother"
Adam: It's like, BOOM!
It's like, do you know that tik-tok sound where they do like,
*BOOM!*
And so like, "I kiss your brother." BOOM!
"I make my own rules." BOOM BOOM!
"I'm not the devil." BOOM!
Kayla: I thought we were gonna add-
Adam: Ah sorry, I should have been clear about that, I am really sorry.
Jacob: She, like, took me wherever she was.
Jacob: She like transported me, she was like so- Umu: You were on the end of that chain.
Jacob: Mm, I was on the end of that chain. Kayla Rae: No, I was being pulled along.
Jacob: She is like so sexy and confident and beautiful.
Umu: And as for you, were the visuals too much?
Or were you just drawn into the music so much
that you wanted to close your eyes?
Will: Oh, I was just listening to the music, yeah.
I can just hear better, you know, when I'm not looking at something.
It's very tasteful, everything is very tasteful.
There were several kind of little, just little elements,
little subtle elements that gave it really really cool character
and made it really intriguing to hear little things,
like those little vocal chops are awesome,
I think they are so sick,
it just chops up the vocal in like a weird way
that doesn't even sound like a word, really,
but you can tell that it's derived from what she just sang
and it's like this delay, you know, it's like, cool.
Liam: I think I wanted, especially the chorus,
to be like filled out a bit more, it felt like a little bit hollow,
and I think that could have just been solved
by like raising the level of the string patch, honestly, (Rachel: Yeah)
it like, that and the kind of beat was like pushed way back,
or like down, it was kind of like under everything.
Jason: It's just this very haunting kind of quality of space
because when it comes to things like horror.
Where does horror lie?
It lies in empty space or darkness or something so it's like,
you're kind of like, "Where are we right now?"
And then these weird sounds are kind of coming in.
So I think that was really effective for like the horror.
Liam: Yeah, I like how they played with the bass timbres though.
Rachel: I actually, I like that, they kind of changed the...
Liam: It kinda opens up in the pre-chorus a bit,
it's a little more ambient.
Rachel: It changed the-
Liam: Whereas it's like super, like the-
super distinct endings to the held notes in the verse, kind of.
Ali: I like the string part in the chorus.
They are not chords, they are arpeggiated,
so I mean, when you are arpeggiating things,
that adds another rhythmic element
cuz it's not like hold, sustain,
it's *sings arpeggio*
Henry: I like that it's a broken arpeggio,
so it's not like just chord changes,
you really hear each of those hits, and it's all pizz, I think.
Jory: The vocal production is really good,
it's really dry at, like during the verses
there's a lot of mouth sounds, kind of,
which is like kind of unsettling sometimes but...
I don't know, sometimes it's like
it's the vibe for this song, I guess, it's a little creepy.
That refers to reverb.
A dry vocal is just one that doesn't have any reverb on it,
so it doesn't, it doesn't exist in a space, really,
it just is right there, right in front of you.
Reverb kind of simulates depth in the audio field
so like, you know, if you turn up the 5s reverb all the way
it sounds like it's...
it sounds like it's a mile away.
Umu: Why do you think they chose to go dry for this song?
Jory: Because it's right up in, it's right up in your business, you know?
It's super, super confrontational.
it was very like, listen to me, grab you by the collar.
Adam: I like that the beginning was kind of like, like the verses,
there was no accompaniment,
it was just kind of like the beat and her,
it just kind of pulled you in as a listener and you were like,
"Oh what the heck? Wait, what's going on?"
Kayla: Yeah.
Henry: I was really impressed at how much she exposed her voice
throughout a lot of this, where at the beginning, like,
very bare instrumentation,
just like a bass and percussion and her singing,
and then in that like, in the middle of that song,
at like close to a bridge, just her:
Wow.
Like, that was so striking.
It's like woah, everything is alone, it's just her,
and my attention is sucked up into just listening right now
because she's commanding the room,
she is really commanding the space
and using that silence to her advantage.
Ali: I really like her voice.
It's just super clean and like effortless
and it doesn't have a super, like, screaming tone to it.
Liam: I also like her vocal timbre a lot and how she utilized that. Rachel: I liked all the vocal stuff, a lot.
Liam: Yeah, like it was, Rachel: I just like her voice.
Liam: She went from just like no vibrato, like super smooth,
just like laying it down,
and then she kind of flexed a bit too, like, it was nice.
Adam: But that one part, where she started talking?!
Oh. My. God.
That was so cool!
Kayla: I don't remember.
Adam: Oh. Umu: It was like at the bridge.
Adam: It wasn't that cool to Kayla.
And then just straight into the riff? Oh~
Kayla: Yeah, that's so soothing. Adam: Wow.
Kayla: She has a voice that like, you can like put someone to sleep.
Adam: In like the way - yeah. Kayla: In the best way possible.
Adam: It was like she pulled you in, like telling you a secret.
Jacob: I love how it set at all mezzo-y
and then the belt that came at the end was so like,
it was like, it was high too, it was like:
Like what the heck? What, that is like...
Kayla Rae: I personally love when there is like-
cuz I feel like so much of pop music can sit pretty high,
I love when, I LOVE when they like sit lower,
I feel like it just gives a full, like a fully different experience
and it just seems more like raw,
it gives like a deeper, I don't know, like more whole.
Which makes sense for like where it is,
you know, with like chest voice, it's like, and then when you mix and...
you know, like there can be some, it's not necessarily pure all the time,
so like this like deep kind of just like gave...
a lot.
Umu: It felt like I did see a lot of subtle...
representation of good versus evil.
I might be making things up.
But one of them being the range, right?
So in the verses everything is so dark,
the chorus hits, everything is so dark in the lower range,
then it felt as if,
if this is a song or some sort of war between between her
darkness and her human side
then it feels like when she did leap up to higher in the range,
that felt very pure,
that felt like she was trying to escape
from something that's holding her back.
Kayla Rae: Oftentimes lower stuff is associated with evil,
which is why like mezzos and baritones in opera
tend to have like more of the evil roles,
and then like sopranos and tenors are like the love interests
or like the sweet, like, you know, pure.
And so I kind of liked that there was like,
especially when it, in the beginning it set low
and then it just like popped up for a second,
which is kind of, I mean, exactly what she was saying,
good and evil can coexist.
Umu: See? And when she is belting in her higher register she says:
"I'm not the devil"
Kayla: We too, as singers, like,
really strengthening your text,
knowing what you're trying to get from the audience,
you don't want like, you don't want to pull the audience in,
you have to make the audience want to come to you.
Kayla: So that's what she did. Yes. Adam: And she has a lot of power and like these,
Kayla: The simple effort, with her fingers, I was like, Adam: These lyrics.
Kayla: Wow, I'm like, like all the different shapes with her hands.
Adam: Lean back, like, and everything was just so easy. (Kayla: Yes)
Brian: It kind of goes along with what she's saying about like
good and evil because like,
minor, people like to think of minor as evil or sad or spooky
and then major is like happy,
but the way she kind of constructed the melody,
it hangs around, kind of, in between the two,
which is kind of like, goes along with what she's saying
about being in between good and evil.
Ali: Chromaticism in general,
because you are using a lot more dissonance
than a normal 4-chord pattern, like:
[I-IV-ii7-V]
[I (C major)]
Like that's pretty straight forward,
but once you add chromaticism in the bass,
or like descend in the bass,
it's kind of, it throws you off because
you don't know where it's going to go next
cuz when you move chromatically, like,
your options are just more open.
Jason: Just bringing down the melody [G to F♯],
that's bringing a tritone, and a tritone is literally just like,
the symbol, musically, of just like disorder,
Brian: And the devil. Jason: and like-
Brian: Called "The Devil's Interval"? Jason: And the devil, well it was like the devil's,
Jason: it is, was called the devil's interval.
If, C minor already has A♭ major in it if you just change one note,
it's kind of the bad, the minor, and good are all in the,
it's all the same place, it's all the same thing,
it's just one half-step difference,
it's the same with the one half-step difference turning it from
*pretty C minor*
into
*tRiTOnE!* [t/n: In the song it's part of a V/V]
It's all just one, it's all based on one half-step,
which is exactly what she is saying, so the harmony changes,
bad, or good to evil,
and evil to good, with one half-step,
it's the same thing as people have like
one little thing inside of them
and greed and temptation can like, pull them,
so quickly, so easily, it's literally just as easy as:
or
Umu: Do you have like mixed feelings about this?
Or you just don't know what you want to comment on?
Ju Young: I think it's good that I don't know what to comment on.
Cuz it's leaving me confused for what, like,
I like when music does that, when it leaves me confused,
cuz like, when I'm listening, when I'm looking at the lyrics it's like,
okay so is she talking about like this guy?
Like, oh, or is she talking about herself?
Or is this like everything combined?
And then with the music it's like oh my god, like,
this could mean like anything
and now I am very confused.
But that's great because she leaves it very open-ended.
Owen: It's interesting because
I keep seeing this relationship as her with herself
and saying like, "Why are you leaning on me again?"
I'm, that's just what's on here, but it's like
there is some sort of god complex with the main speaker of the song
that's like controlling the other individual
that the narrator is talking to.
Kevin: I'm really shocked that I didn't notice that from the,
mostly the visual cues in the music video.
Yeah, it's, I think it's pretty clear that
the two people are her and herself,
just like two different selves.
Yeah.
There is so much imagery of like a subservient one
and then a, the dominating one,
but then when they dance together
it's like both of them are coexisting.
Yeah, I feel that.
That's cool.
It also makes the 28 Reasons title make more sense
cuz like, you've been with yourself for 28 years, you know?
Yeah~
Umu: Dude, I just got chills.
Seulgi: ~I kiss your brother~
Adam: BOOM!
Seulgi: ~그 맘 훔쳐~
Adam: BOOM BOOM!
Seulgi: ~독이 퍼져도 못 느껴 my pleasure~