Henry: They jumped up registers really quick—OH!
Cloud: They're going to fuck you up!!
Henry: Dang, they didn't even give me a chance to process what I just heard!
Umu: So now you're reacting to the girl group (여자)아이들/(G)I-DLE
and their song, 'Lion' released recently on the Korean reality show called 'Queendom'.
The lyrics use the imagery of a lion to express the power of a queen.
In the wild, lions are matriarchal and the females do the majority of the hunting.
The use of the lion in the song shows the strength of women in society.
The video is theorized to be based on the story of Joan of Arc,
and the symbolism can be seen the in the individual scenes of the girls:
Minnie surrounded by arrows, Soyeon in prison, and Yuqi with the halo.
And the song is composed by the member Soyeon, she's the rapper, and the songwriter Yummy Tone.
(*Cloud laughing*) Henry: Yummy?
Henry: So I'm going to listen for Yummy Tone (Cloud: Dude I'm going to let you hit 'Play')
And I'm going to listen for empowerment.
Let's find that—let's get that bread, let's find that bag— let's find that baguette le—le—let's get that baguette!
Umu: Go ahead!!
Cloud: Okay
Henry: Do you hear that bass?
Cloud: Yeah, I hear that bass!
Cloud: The little, like, reverb (Henry: Whoaaaa)
Cloud: I love how she's not moving, it's just her face.
Henry: Awe that's so cool!
Brianna: Ooooh she's giving me Sia vibes!
James: Yeah, I know I was about to say, yeah!! (Brianna: Maddie Ziegler, the fucking cage!)
Brianna: Ooh
Brianna: Too rough in the bed?
Henry: They jumped up registers really quick—OH!
Cloud: They're going to fuck you up!
Henry: Dang, they didn't even give me a chance to process what I just heard!
Kevin: This beat is interesting,
it feels very...it has a lot of substance in it.
I think the piano chords have something to do with it.
Elizabeth: Wow, they balance the piano really well.
You can hear it over all the other instruments happening. (Owen: You're right.)
Owen: Helps out the other chords super well.
(Elizabeth: Yeah) Owen: These are the same chords as 'I Need a Hero',
like the 80's song. (Elizabeth: Oh my god!)
Elizabeth: Eh?
Henry: Whoa
Whoa
That syncopated...what is that?
Like synth hits?
Daniel: I love the uh...rhythmic synths in the back.
They function both harmonically and rhythmically.
Cloud: I feel like we're watching them level up.
You know, like they're starting with just the bare minimum,
they're like clawing their way up.
And they're like getting more and more powerful.
Henry: *growls*
Fiona: Like, they're something about it that makes it feel so relaxed
comfortable and like (Daniel: Yeah) "Yas bitch!"
"I'm a lion!"
Brianna: The claws
Brianna: The claws... James: I know!
Brianna: That's how I'm trying to be.
Kevin: "I'm a queen, like a lion"?
Kevin: Whoa
Whoa
Henry: Awe those triplets are sick!
Henry: And then back to sixteenths Cloud: Every beat!
Cloud: Yessss!
Yesss!
Henry: They didn't do a roar, I would have loved a roar there.
If they put one more lion roar in there
Cloud: No, I like the quiet
Henry: You like the quiet? Cloud: The breathe, and then in
Daniel: And then, there's uh...
And then they bring back the lament bass,
but this time they layered it.
Henry: It's like the beginning,
her singing, the timbre, the reverb.
Cloud: Yeah, and the reliance on the rhythm.
Kevin: Is this where it ends?
Kevin: Yeah!!
What?
James: F*ck...
Brianna: You better!
James: F***ck!
I'm like, really shook.
Like that was like perfect.
In like every way.
Brianna: They know what qualities their voices have,
and the contrast that they do it with,
one person would do like a really soft voice timbre,
somebody will come and super rough-like.
And just how they contrast that, one after the other.
It's a good touch.
And I really liked how in the beginning they use a lot of drumming and that reminds me of kind of like that
African drumming and like you're in a jungle
James: Just the register in which a lot of them were singing
is like, really, really low for women.
But I think that ties into the like (Brianna: Jungle.) "We're badass bitches, low singing isn't just for men."
Usually women are relegated to like high, like wilty, vibrato but no!
They were like we're getting like it down in the weeds, because we're the shit,
and we can do what we want!
like that was sort of the vibe I got from that.
And it was so good!
Brianna: I really liked their transitions in between, like the pieces
This had the smoothest rap transition
I feel like whenever there's a rap verse in a Korean pop song,
they have to completely change what they're doing before.
But this just went to the original drumming beat.
And she was good!
Okay, sorry. They're all really good! (Brianna: Yeah.)
Kevin: Man, sometimes it's easy to think that,
you know, without cool chords there are no good songs.
And oftentimes, depending on what songs we react to,
we can fall in that mindset.
But I think this song really proves that
You don't need...really cool chords to make a cool song.
But, you do need really fresh beats,
lots of variety in the soundscapes and even
some structurally interesting things.
And you can make a song that's very good and I think deserves its empowering title.
Isaac: It's importance is that, when you have like a
beat that continues just to go through that whole entire section,
that you have differences on top and they really sold it,
because they have differences in voices, difference in the approach
to singing those lines and that's what kept the attention for me.
Kevin: This almost doesn't feel like pop and I mean that
in a way because, with K-Pop and other genres,
of pop music there's a specific type of beat,
usage of percussion that I always expect.
And with the usage here,
it reminds me more of a hip-hop beat.
(Isaac: Mhm) Because of the creativity,
and the way it kind of—it doesn't stand out
from the instruments with the whole loudness war thing
trying to one-up it,
but it really integrates itself well.
And that type of integration,
it's not just dynamics it's also the timbre and the tone,
it reminds me of a hip-hop beat.
But obviously they're singing over it mostly, which is very cool.
Elizabeth: Well I think this is another one of those times when like you can't really separate the
music from the visuals. Like the visuals are so important to the story they're
trying to tell. A lot of it was in the dancing, the movements, and a lot of power
statements with the outfits they were wearing, and their body language was
meant to be very like aggressive. So I think that paired with an aggressively
minor key which they'd cement with, you know, lots of stepwise motion plus a
really—it's not complicated, but like there is some polyrhythm in there
that just kind of gets the groove going really steadily I think, that does accomplish the point.
Owen: I could, yeah, that all makes sense, I mean the whole video just felt like, like it was meant to show
power in the video itself and in the music like everything felt very stable and strong.
Daniel: I mean, I think to go off of what Fiona just said about—
Fiona: The use of like space and silence really makes it, you have to lean in to hear.
Daniel: The spaciousness and kind of the expansiveness I think is a better word
of the music, the lament bass is kind of stretched out, so there is like a slower
harmonic rhythm to it and at the same time you hear like the small pulses
metric and rhythmic pulses like bah bah-bah bah-bah, right? Which it sounds like a heartbeat.
Yeah and so I think they definitely try to go after this growling,
low kind of like in the wild, like in the bushes flying, sort of feel by emulating
with the range of their voice to sound really low, you know? Like the way I am
trying to make myself sound I suppose.
Fiona: Yeah, this was a darker song, it sounded
like it was like high energy, but it was still like relaxed so I think that
captures the power of a lion and they did that through like having lots of
space in this song and having very powerful vocals reigning over everything else going on.
Umu: So did you get that empowerment and Yummy Tone?
Cloud: They were leveling up my dude! (Henry: Oh, plenty of Yummy)
Henry: Yeah they were next level! That shit's next level.
Henry: Yeah
Cloud: I said it in the middle of the song but they literally started out with one color
like just the plain like one color like very simple looking dress
then like every time it came back and you saw them they were like and more and
more bling and they're putting the crowns on and they had the red outfit at
the end that was finally in color. (Henry: Yeah and they had an up-chin/looking down pose thing)
Cloud: Like I feel like I'm seeing these Pokémon like Level 0, Level 50, to Level 100.
Henry: I really liked that low hum at the beginning, it's...it really sets this kind
of question mark, of like, where are they going to go with this, you know? (Cloud: Yeah)
(Cloud: I was—) And then they go bump bump bump (Cloud: Yeah, you're right) they can pop into something
But—uh and that's —I think that's what they did, I thought it would build up more
from that one bass layer and simple drum beat,
but they went straight into it. It kind of caught me off guard,
like how a lion catches you off guard
when it hunts you and goes *growls*
Henry: Yeah... Cloud: Nice.