Sometimes songs just worm their way into your brain and torment you until it seem that the song is all you can thing about. Earworms are a nuisance and so far there is no known cure. It’s a terrible affliction and all I can do when affected by one is to listen to the song on repeat until my brain is so oversaturated with the song that it grabs onto any other song just to hear something different. It’s not the most eloquent of actions, but it is kinda the only one I’ve got at the moment.
Lately a song has wormed in and been bugging me,so I figured maybe writing about it would help get it out of my system. I guess you can stop reading now if you don’t like KPop, because the song is G Dragon’s latest song (single? release? it just had a music video, but I have no idea how the Korean music industry works), ‘Who You’.
Now, G Dragon is the ‘Leader’ of Big Bang, but they’ve all been doing individual side projects lately so there has been a bunch of things coming out of YG from the Big Bang side of things. The music video for ‘Who You’ that I linked above came out earlier in the week and that was the first time I listened to the song and I was caught by it straight away. G Dragon’s stuff can be a bit hit or miss for me, and some of his other recent songs have not been my cup of tea at all, so this was a nice surprise.
The song starts off with some nice strong chords on the piano to break up the lines of the lyrics and these chords continue through the song to tie it all in together, so the little rappy bits aren’t as jarring as some of his other songs. The only time piano isn’t there is in the refrain, and that makes it stand out compared to the rest of the song.
His voice is clear and simple, and the lines in the lyrics are clearly defined by the rhythm of the song. There is more singing than rapping, which makes it easier to, uh, understand the words. Korean raps can kinda end up as a mess up sounds and it’s hard to distinguish the words in there, even if I can’t actually understand what the words are.
Looking at the English translation of the lyrics ‘Who You’ is actually a sad break up song about how he misses his ex-girlfriend and how upset and frustrated he’s gotten about the situation. It’s kinda obvious that is what it’s about from the English in the song, but the Korean parts go into it in more detail, and it’s a strange juxtaposition between the sweeter, happier sound of the song and the more serious lyrics. I guess I’m used to more dramatic sounding love songs from KPop artists, rather than the opposite. I feel a bit bad that this song makes me want to dance along to the du-du-du-du-du-du chorus when it’s actually a sad song.