Get your sheer shirts out it’s 강박 time
More of an extended guitar solo. I actually wrote this months ago and finally decided to post it haha, hope you enjoy
God’s Menu cover:
• God’s Menu (神메뉴) - Str...
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Check out my original music here:
open.spotify.com/artist/6iAve...
soundcloud.app.goo.gl/oXjRnX1...
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A little essay about ‘Red Lights’ (강박):
I really love this song. The themes of sexuality and restriction are key throughout, expressed in the video by soft materials (sheets, clothes, feathers) against harder materials (chains, jewellery, dark, flat sets). But I feel this is expressed most through a sense of push-and-pull in the music.
The first beat of the song highlights this contrast - a sharp beat following the soft, messy breaths of the opening. The song starts confidently with a small joke: ‘I cannot breathe’, despite using the breaths as part of the beat. The beats are steady and constant, fluttering like a heartbeat. The singer knows what he wants, and he asks for it.
The second half of the verse is more uneasy, less sure of itself, as though immediately regretting what it asked for. I love the way the rolling guitar plucks don’t quite match up with the syncopated beats, it gives an overall sense of disorientation, like the song can’t quite settle - it’s toying with ideas but never committing: it’s holding itself back, and the prior confidence begins to look like desperation.
It makes the electric guitar in the prechorus hit so much harder, signalling both an auditory and emotional change in the song. ‘I’m going crazy now’ confirms the singer’s position: one of passivity, not control. Now the full force of desire comes in, and the weight and gravity of it pulls the song into a darker tone. Where before the disorienting feel kept you floating, now it pulls you under, and those orchestral strings build like waves leading up to the chorus, completely subjecting you to the mercy of the song. The journey from control and confidence to helplessness was smooth, easy, almost unnoticeable until it was too late - such is how temptation and indulgence creep.
The song commands ‘shh’: silence duly follows. Then the drop hits with dizzying effect. The beats carry the chorus, their syncopation here mirroring the one earlier. The contrast between the deep, heavy bass of the synths and the silence underneath the soaring electric guitar reinforces the disorienting feel and expresses the core conflict of the song - this push and pull between temptation and restraint. Those strings pull in more ways than one.
Now the song has succumbed to that temptation, it’s being dragged along on a tide it can’t quite escape. Sexuality is present in both the music and lyrics. However, I think the thematic core of the song is more complex. Rather sexuality is a motif expressing the theme of temptation and the pull of our darker selves. Feelings of lust and guilt are universal, in every sphere, and to every demographic. The title ‘강박’, literally translating to ‘compulsion’, embodies this idea: we are constantly drawn to a dark side of ourselves, relentlessly controlled by it, and so, in our struggle to resist, are constantly in conflict with ourselves.
Another key theme of the song is reflection: this is made explicit in the music video, with 방찬 (Bang Chan) and 현진 (Hyunjin) mirroring each other as the conceptual ‘dark side’ to their respective temptations. There are auditory mirrors, choreographical parralels, and echoed blocking in different sets - all contributing to a sense of inescapbaility and universality, that whatever we experience has been seen before, but, more importantly, has been failed before. As humans, ultimately we are doomed to fail. It is in the endless push-and-pull between desire and restraint where we find our stength, our failure, our humanity - our artistry.
This is not just a sexy song. ‘Red Lights’ articulates something so very human, so very innate, that when it strikes it strikes hard, and when it restrains you feel the withdrawal in your chest, like inhaling cold water. It’s a brilliant song, brilliantly composed and produced, playing to the core of human conflict, and I love it.
1 ноя 2021
