Okay I am doing this, I’ve been thinking about a song for two days straight and it’s eating my brain, I shan’t know peace until I inflict it on you too:
(actually released on 26 Nov, I just missed its 9th anniversary)
First up, it’s filmed in Berlin with German extras, all the kudos for that, LOEN. I know we like to fake these things, but most Berliners would recognise those places. The “Photoautomat” looks like the one at Warschauer Str., for example. Ciclope Festival is a real thing.
When it drops to just that Casio Rock-1 beat?
which made me think of this, naturally:
History themselves said the song had a “Latin” vibe – in this video:
The keyboard riff is familiar to me, I just can’t quite name it. To make matters worse, although I have some basic music theory, I’m mostly a dancer.
And what a dancer means by “beat” or “rhythm” is not quite what a drummer or keyboard player means. Let’s say I recognise a “pattern” instead: “slow-fast-fast”. Rumba.
Compare and contrast: the WAITY instrumental.
On the other hand – it could be a Bossa Nova, because listen to this:
This is the kind of very basic keyboard riff I was hunting for.
(side note, OMG the Optigan ad!!!)
Or this kind of thing:
Both fit the “Latin” mould: Rhumba (in the ballroom sense) is broadly Cuban, while musically you have things like Congolese rumba. Bossa Nova has a Cuban and a Brazilian type.
So who fell into the Latin vibes? Yoon Sang and East4A, with lyrics by Kim Eana.
Yoon Sang has been around for a minute, writing music for Lovelyz and IU (also at LOEN at the time) and Ga In.
And ‘Crush U’ by EXO-CBX:
Now he’s apparently at Sungshin Women’s University, claims Genius.
And East4A aka Kim Yang Woo? He’s worked for Twice and Sunmi and IU (ofc) and Brown Eyed Girls and, oh, everyone.
He also has a credit on History’s ‘Psycho’, shared with Lee Minsu.
But where it becomes really funny is that the rest of the Blue Spring album is like this too – but composed by completely different people!
‘Tomorrow‘ is by KZ (words by D’DAY) – dude is BUSY these days, check him out!
And ‘Torn Apart‘ is by 삼박자 (Sam Bak Ja) or SAM BAG JA, about whom I can’t find out anything – apart from this JeA song:
So someone at LOEN fell into a box of Bossa Nova samples or attended a rhumba class and made an album about it – but what I’m curious about is who allowed ‘Hello‘?
Was Dean already that big in 2013? 😁
He only debuted as a singer in 2015, and ‘Instagram’ was 2017. That said, he does have ‘Voodoo Doll’ _and_ ‘Eternity’ to his name:
(witness the Jaehwan Throw!)
ANDDD Uniq’s ‘EOEO’ 🤯
That said, the other composers on ‘Hello’ are no slouches either: idk much about Kim Hyung Kyu, but Hyuk Shin (EXO, CLC, NCT, MX, TXT) and Jordan Kyle (SHINee, Oh My Girl, WSJN, Uniq, EXO) also made songs for A.C.E: 5TAR, Take Me Higher, Black & Blue?
(You know who else has a composer credit on 5TAR? Taemin!)
Okay back to History. A very curious thing I found is that Wiki claims Blue Spring was “produced by Cho Young-chul and with lyrics by Kim Eana“. KE I found on other sites too, but not Cho – crucially, he’s not on KOMCA.
So who is he? Well. He is a producer! Or he was – these days, he’s the CEO of Mystic Ent / Mystic Story, which manages Billlie and Lucy, and also owns Apop (Brown Eyed Girls). And, ummm, SME is its largest shareholder…
Look there’s Kim Eana! And Lee Minsu!
No idea who associated Cho with Blue Spring. He might be! I just can’t find a second source on that, and nor have I figured out how KOMCA chooses to spell his name, so I can’t see what he produced.
All I have is this Allkpop article that asserts he did.
Further proof that History really did go to Germany: Vulkan-Stern Automaten-Casino is a chain of arcades, though they lost their Berlin licences in 2019.
Heh, while looking for more pictures, I found this Soompi article: Boy group History to make comeback as bad boys with Blue Spring. This might be the source of the Wiki entry – but the producer is spelled “Jo Young Chul” here.
So. For all that ‘What Am I To You’ starts off as this simple retro Casio beat and kind of a cheesy riff, it’s sunk its teeth in me for days now – and as you can see, picking apart the who and what of it proves rather complex.
This is me now:
Anyway last word to History, here’s the dance practice:
And on that note (boom!) I am out.
SkorpionUK 