bro i'm literally just vibing
Mar. 16th, 2021 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dayflieshi hello! so i wrote another analysis of a txt song. i'm still trying to figure out how to format on here so please bear with me and the fact that the spaces between paragraphs are abnormally large?? a comparison
a few notable differences
sick trumpet - (if you were following me when this album came out you might remember me having several crises about whether this was a trumpet or a saxophone. the debate ends TODAY). it sounds improvised; they might’ve called up a trumpeter and just told them to do whatever they wanted to in the recording booth. in fact, i tracked down the song credits and according to wikipedia the trumpeter is Jo Jeong-hyeon, who also plays the flagelhorn for in the song. i honestly have no idea what that is, and looking it up gave me little to no answers, but props to them, they did a great job!
groovy bassline - the bassline is probably my favourite thing about this song. this also feels pretty improvised in the verses, and once again wikipedia tells me it’s a real bass played by Jeon Seung-hoon.
yeonjun’s rap! it sounds great, and it works perfectly with the song.
a few similarities
when he sings do the melody goes somewhere we don’t expect it to. this is called an accidental. if we're talking music terminology real quick, every song is composed in a scale which basically determines what notes are used in the song. whenever a note that isn't in that scale occurs, it's called an accidental, and these "foreign notes" add tension and make things sound more interesting.
if you try listening to the chorus while keeping this in mind, you might be able to hear how maeumdo sounds different! this note catches us off guard since it does something we don’t expect it to.
call and response between the vocals and an instrument in the chorus. in the original version of the song the instrument responding to the vocals is an electric guitar, but txt has swapped it out with a trumpet, which is another way of paying tribute to the genre of the original version.
[the vocal calls] geunyeoman bomyeon
[the trumpet responds]
[the vocal calls] werobji ana
the dreamy feel, although txt amped up the dreaminess by a lot. i'll expand on this in the next section.
vibes or something
the song is super echoe-y; there’s a lot of reverb on it, it’s kind of like standing in a cathedral. there are also these layers of sound - if you listen to the beginning of the song there are some really ambient vocals as well as something Extra underneath it all. it fades in the verse, and comes back full force in the chorus before fading in the interlude to make room for the trumpet. i’m not entirely sure what it is, it might just be Super reverb, but it makes the song super atmospheric.
before almost every chorus there are these crystal tingly sounds, i wanna say it’s some sort of windchime but that’s probably way off. regardless, they really add to the dreaminess of the track, and adding the breathy vocals and the free, improvised sound of the bass and the trumpet, txt’s version of fairsham sounds really floaty - this is just a Floating Through Space With No Earthly Attachments kind of song.
as always interpretations are individual. i personally think the floaty ambience makes the track a teeny bit unsettling. as i mentioned before, the original version of the song also has this same feeling of being in a dream, but txt’s version took that and doubled it (and maybe tripled it).
i kind of get the sense that something isn’t entirely right, and well, they are describing the feeling of being genuinely in love, and having your happiness depend on a woman in a tv-commercial; the soundscape might actually be a reflection of being in love with something that isn’t real. like getting attached to something that can only come true within a dream.
this is relevant on many levels; you could interpret fairsham a commentary on how capitalism essentially traps people within the system with a promise of a fulfilling, happy life (but only after they've worked for an appropriate amount of time - so never). or you could read it as a meta-commentary on the parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities. the possibilities are endless, really.
a comparison
this, as you probably know is a remake of a song by light & salt of the same name, so i gave the original a listen, and i’ll start of this analysis with a comparison of the two versions.
the original fairy of shampoo is more minimalist in it’s instrumentation, and the sound is super funky and kind of disco-y - it also had an ocarina (i think) so that was pretty neat. light and salt is a fusion jazz group (according to a blog i read), so i think txt’s decision to drag the song towards jazzier territory was partly influenced by that!
apart from the melody, not much of the song was that similar; txt really took this song and made it their own, while still maintaining its core 90s citypop elements. i personally love that they made that decision instead of revamping the song entirely, but that’s because i have a personal vendetta against the horror that is edgy netflix remakes [shakes fist at sky].
a few notable differences
sick trumpet - (if you were following me when this album came out you might remember me having several crises about whether this was a trumpet or a saxophone. the debate ends TODAY). it sounds improvised; they might’ve called up a trumpeter and just told them to do whatever they wanted to in the recording booth. in fact, i tracked down the song credits and according to wikipedia the trumpeter is Jo Jeong-hyeon, who also plays the flagelhorn for in the song. i honestly have no idea what that is, and looking it up gave me little to no answers, but props to them, they did a great job!groovy bassline - the bassline is probably my favourite thing about this song. this also feels pretty improvised in the verses, and once again wikipedia tells me it’s a real bass played by Jeon Seung-hoon.
yeonjun’s rap! it sounds great, and it works perfectly with the song.
a few similarities
the melody - i love the melody, especially the chorus. as i’ve previously stated in my analysis of mitm human beings love patterns, so when something breaks it up it surprises us, and the chorus does that! let’s take the first chorus as an example. in the first chorus soobin sings:
geunyeoman bomyeon werobji ana
seulpeun maeumdo meolli sarajyeo
seulpeun maeumdo meolli sarajyeo
when he sings do the melody goes somewhere we don’t expect it to. this is called an accidental. if we're talking music terminology real quick, every song is composed in a scale which basically determines what notes are used in the song. whenever a note that isn't in that scale occurs, it's called an accidental, and these "foreign notes" add tension and make things sound more interesting.
if you try listening to the chorus while keeping this in mind, you might be able to hear how maeumdo sounds different! this note catches us off guard since it does something we don’t expect it to.
call and response between the vocals and an instrument in the chorus. in the original version of the song the instrument responding to the vocals is an electric guitar, but txt has swapped it out with a trumpet, which is another way of paying tribute to the genre of the original version.
[the vocal calls] geunyeoman bomyeon
[the trumpet responds]
[the vocal calls] werobji ana
[the trumpet responds]
the dreamy feel, although txt amped up the dreaminess by a lot. i'll expand on this in the next section.
vibes or something
the song is super echoe-y; there’s a lot of reverb on it, it’s kind of like standing in a cathedral. there are also these layers of sound - if you listen to the beginning of the song there are some really ambient vocals as well as something Extra underneath it all. it fades in the verse, and comes back full force in the chorus before fading in the interlude to make room for the trumpet. i’m not entirely sure what it is, it might just be Super reverb, but it makes the song super atmospheric. before almost every chorus there are these crystal tingly sounds, i wanna say it’s some sort of windchime but that’s probably way off. regardless, they really add to the dreaminess of the track, and adding the breathy vocals and the free, improvised sound of the bass and the trumpet, txt’s version of fairsham sounds really floaty - this is just a Floating Through Space With No Earthly Attachments kind of song.
bringing in the lyrics, the way they have constructed the song makes perfect sense:
Pushing through the square screen
Gently approaching me
Plating a silvery illusion
She is my own little fairy
Like the early morning fog
Coming closer to me
Her long hair, waving
She whispers with a soft smile
Gently approaching me
Plating a silvery illusion
She is my own little fairy
Like the early morning fog
Coming closer to me
Her long hair, waving
She whispers with a soft smile
fairsham is about falling in love with a girl in a shampoo commercial, and they’re quite literally illustrating the fog they’re describing in the music itself with the dreamy vibe they’ve created. this is called text painting, which i also referred to in my mitm analysis.
so what does it all mean?
as always interpretations are individual. i personally think the floaty ambience makes the track a teeny bit unsettling. as i mentioned before, the original version of the song also has this same feeling of being in a dream, but txt’s version took that and doubled it (and maybe tripled it).
i kind of get the sense that something isn’t entirely right, and well, they are describing the feeling of being genuinely in love, and having your happiness depend on a woman in a tv-commercial; the soundscape might actually be a reflection of being in love with something that isn’t real. like getting attached to something that can only come true within a dream.
this is relevant on many levels; you could interpret fairsham a commentary on how capitalism essentially traps people within the system with a promise of a fulfilling, happy life (but only after they've worked for an appropriate amount of time - so never). or you could read it as a meta-commentary on the parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities. the possibilities are endless, really.
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Date: 2021-03-21 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-21 10:13 pm (UTC)