I listen to Kpop vocals purely as musical instruments, so recognizing that a song is entirely in English does take quite a while for me.
Especially when a lot of artists are using English quite a bit in their other songs already.
Stefan K
2021-11-14 00:42:33 +0000 UTC
I think it's because the first thing I'm looking for is the rhythm and how the instrumental sounds that everything else gets blurred a bit haha
KpopPrince
2021-11-13 16:55:00 +0000 UTC
Dahuyn wrote the lyrics to Cruel and said that the meaning was whether being okay after a breakup is "too cruel" so I think it's more similar to Rewind (in interpretation) than Icon but they're all so good. I thought Moonlight was going to be my favorite but as I continue replaying the album I change my mind because it's filled with such great songs
reginamva
2021-11-13 15:17:25 +0000 UTC
It always startles me when a native speaker doesn't realize a song is in english when i as a german instantly notice it π
Edit: Also for looking up producers, who wrote the lyrics etc. the respective album discussion thread on the r/kpop subreddit is my go to.
Maarten
2021-11-13 13:49:20 +0000 UTC
I can verify that Moonlight is authentic to the early 1980s pop songs of Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and DeBarge (just some examples), where every song sounded like a party you wanted to join. Plus, Chaeyoung's lower register... in English... wow. I'm going to wear this song out.
Moonlight was arranged/written (song, not lyrics) by The Stereotypes, who did "Bad Boy" and "Kingdom Come" for Red Velvet. JYP is spending for top line across the board: writing, producing, arranging, mixing.
Also, that driving bass in Moonlight is a tribute (conscious or not) to Louis Johnson, the bass player for Michael Jackson's early albums Off the Wall, Thriller, and Dangerous. He's one of the grandfathers of slap bass technique, and is responsible for a lot of involuntary bad dancing. Whenever I hear a song like this, that's his sound they are trying to replicate.
Robert Arthur
2021-11-13 10:24:41 +0000 UTC
Happy to see the love for Rewind! I haven't seen as much conversation about that one in comparison to other tracks, but it's easily my favourite on the album. And in terms of checking album credits, Wikipedia is usually my go-to for that. If you go to an album's page and look under the "track listing" section, they usually have detailed credits. Maybe not for some smaller groups, but I can find most albums on there.