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Pristin’s Wee Woo: Analyzing Song Structure by the Seventeen Standard

I was sent this link of a post by @basedtzuyu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/basedtzuyu/status/844365400016142336

And the below stuff is me analyzing Wee Woo using Seventeen’s songs as a point of comparison and let’s have such A FUN TIME APPRECIATING MUSIC CHOICES!! WOO!!! Note: I will sometimes say things that sound very critical of Wee Woo. But I think Pristin is full of cool dudes and this is just an analysis I made for fun times. I’m not lookin’ for fan wars!! Definitely not!

CARATS AND PRISTIN FANS GATHER ROUND, this is super interesting actually!! This person (@basedtzuyu) has some pretty interesting stuff to say and I think that they did a good job in starting a conversation we can branch from (even when we don’t agree with her points). IT'S TIME WE TALK ABOUT SONG STRUCTURE, in a very analytical way we haven't talked about it before. Let's try to figure out why some people are so critical of Wee Woo, where Wee Woo pulls from Seventeen, and how Woozi has established a Seventeen style through song structure.

Let's start off by talking about Mansae. The most typical pop song structure follows a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus format. Mansae starts off with an intro-- normal for kpop-- but then it goes into a pre-verse, and that's more interesting.

The intro is a proper introduction, and it's centered around one particular rapper. Its arrangement is pretty bare and the rap follows an adlib-like format. Then the pre-verse (with HVC aka Vernon) resembles the verse in some ways and serves to actually lead in to the verse.

Then it’s the verse, and this verse is strange because it's 15 bars. Most music follows multiples of 4, so verses are almost always 8 bars or 16-- why is this verse 15 bars? The first half of the verse is based on singing, melody, and when Woozi is just about to resolve the melody... he's interrupted. The melody would have felt very complete on the 8th bar, but it was interrupted by something else: the second half of the verse, which is rap-based. So there are 7 bars of singing, and the melody is cut off, unresolved and replaced by 8 bars of rap.

Then, there's a 4-bar pre-chorus. In this pre-chorus, there are three bars of singing and then the arrangement clears out into near silence for 1 bar of rap-- this is THREE BARS OF BUILD-UP and then on the fourth bar, when the melody could either resolve or go over the edge, it does neither. The little pause for a bar of rap allows for A STAGNANT MOMENT, a moment where the tension just hangs there briefly, until the chorus bursts in.

And it does, holy hell, it does. We're treated to an 8-bar chorus, sung by Seungkwan and DK, which is the first resolved melody we've even heard so far. We’ve been building and building all this time; when it ends on that eighth bar, there's a certain satisfaction to hearing that resolution.

And what do you do when a melody resolves?

You usually don't hype it up even more but they do because hOLY FUCK MANSAE HAS TWO CHORUSES. YES, THIS IS A POST-CHORUS, THE "MANSAE-RU-MANSAE-RU-MANSAE-RU-MANSAE-YEAH" IS ANOTHER FUCKING CHORUS. NO RESOLUTION GOES TO DOUBLE RESOLUTION. Post-choruses are NOT a common song structure and Mansae is daring and very of its own for building up to TWO different choruses, and such excellent choruses as well. When you think you're done with Your Ears Succeeding, the happiness JUST DOESN'T END. There's a lot more I can say about Mansae's song structure, but let's cut it short there and talk about what this means for Seventeen and what it means for Pristin.

Seventeen has actually uses elements of Mansae’s structure not only on title tracks, but a lot of non-title tracks as well. (All rules vary; Pretty U and Aju Nice don’t have post-choruses, while No FUN and Beautiful do.) Seventeen-ish song structure suggests:

Raps can be used as a way to keep energy STAGNANT. Resolving a melody causes a decrease in energy, and carrying it upwards, unresolved, can cause overblown build-up which is ultimately unsatisfying. Instead, adding brief rap lines holds the current energy of the song where it is, all the way up until that satisfying burst of energy in a hook or a chorus. (This rule is very often broken for the bridges, where SVT likes to throw a shit ton of whatever they feel like throwing at you for the best possible sensory overload.)

There’s a particular SVT strategy for chorus, post-chorus song structure. The first chorus seems like the main hype train, initially. The post-chorus, though, is what actually contains the primary hook, and often, the title. Contrary to the first chorus, the post-chorus is catchier, often following simpler melodies that resolve quickly. They’re also more percussive, including plays with silence, and may be as short as 4 bars (as in Adore U). I feel like I don’t usually hear pre-choruses AND post-choruses integrated smoothly in the same song, but SVT does that as well; often songs with post-choruses sacrifice their pre-choruses.

The second verse typically has an alternate melody. This is pretty normal for kpop but it’s a choice that Seventeen makes consistently. Typically this requires two alternate melodies, and as for the backtrack, the second verse will start out with a broken down or rhythm-based version of the first verse. Then, on the 9th bar, the backtrack will essentially return to that of the first verse.

As in the post-chorus of Mansae, rap can also be manipulated to RESOLVE. Typically not melodically, but rhythmically. If your melody is complete and you have space to fill, rather than adding an unnecessary flourish, the rap gives you time to resolve the rhythm without untying an already-complete melody.

There is an intro filled with rap adlibs that introduce the song, and possibly a pre-verse to bridge the intro to the verse.

There’re many hook-like vocal fills and adlibs.

The chorus’s melody (esp. the 1st chorus) tends to take an unexpected turn on the 3rd bar and DOES repeat on the 5th, but switches things up again on the 7th. The chorus is willing to repeat in the name of resolution; typically resolves twice.

The verse’s melody tends to take unexpected turns at specific points in time. Usually the melody will take a twist every 2 or 4 bars. The melody will only repeat for the sake of resolution.

So let’s see how Wee Woo compares!!

Wee Woo’s intro is really fuckin’ solid and, broadly speaking, it’s the most popular section of the song. It’s mostly instrumentation with the hook SLIPPED IN there— only for the hook to later return as the basis for the entire post-chorus, becoming, therefore, a refrain that adapts to more than one section. When a song has a post-chorus, it’s common to use the post-chorus as an intro as well because of how the post-chorus connects to the verse. But Wee Woo’s intro is not DIRECTLY the post-chorus, it’s an entire section based on a refrain from the post-chorus with interest added to the spaces in between— much like how the post-chorus of Adore U is made. This is a really unique structure that I’m certain draws from Adore U.

In Adore U, this is actually an amazingly thoughtful strategy because a quick refrain from the intro becomes intertwined with the main hook of the entire song so that they’re dependent on each other, going so far as completing a sentence which was originally unfinished in the intro. How Wee Woo’s approach differs, we’ll get to that in a sec.

First, the verse. We have a lot of differently melodies that’re jammed in here and that hasn’t been so well-received. But Mansae’s verse changes melodies, right? Let’s break that down.

Mansae’s first verse goes…

-2 bars of a consistent melody

-Same 2 bars repeated

-2 bars of a twist on the melody which does not seem predictable

-1 bar that leads from that twist of melody into a resolution of the melody that’ll bring the melody together

-Last bar is cut off by the second half of the verse before it can resolve

Wee Woo’s first verse, by contrast, is…

-1st bar: A melody

-2nd bar: A totally different melody (“ayayaya”)

-3rd bar: A different different melody

-4th bar: 2nd bar repeated

-5th bar: Another totally different melody, and this one is amelodic as well

-6th bar: Back to “ayayaya” (2nd/4th bar) but it still doesn’t tie to the 5th bar

-7th/8th bars: Another totally different melody, this one taking up two bars rather than relying upon the “ayayaya” refrain

You can see this is more of a mess, but it’s not just complexity that caused the downfall; the first half of every line, the odd bars (not even), are all totally different melodies that they try to justify by repeating the same “ayayaya” melody at the end. It sounds like there are two parts of the song; the part which is consistent, and the part which is just about randomized. There’s a repeated line tagged onto what sounds like chaos. Rather than creating an “I didn’t expect the melody to go there,” moment, the listener says, “Wait, what’s the melody?” Furthermore, the refrain is only one note, so even though it’s the part that makes melodic sense, it’s like the organized part is bringing attention away from itself. Mansae throws wrenches into its melodies and then spends time trying to justify them; Wee Woo’s melody here is pretty much all wrenches.

The second half of the verse has a totally different issue. Melodically it sounds like a continuation of the verse… but THE ARRANGER SPLIT PART OF THE VERSE INTO THE PRE-CHORUS. This is definitely an issue of miscommunication. Hold on, I gotta explain, haha.

It’s trendy to spend the second half of a verse building into a pre-chorus… but here we have what sounds like 4 bars of a verse and then an 8 bar pre-chorus? What? What is happening? Fuckery. Fuckery is happening. The first half of the verse is 8 bars. The second half, which builds more, should be 8 bars. And yet instead of that, we have an unusually long pre-chorus… THE RAP WAS WRITTEN TO BE A PART OF THE VERSE, AT LEAST THAT’S WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. The you’re-my-super-he-ro shit? When we have an actually really lovely build-up from two sung lines and then two rapped lines, those should be part of the same section. The rap slipped in there, ignoring the arrangement, sounds much like Seventeen’s use of rap lines to stall build-up and keep your attention. But the arranger, for some reason, changed the instrumentation from that of the verse (all that cool stuff that @basedtzuyu said about changing the instrumentation from that of the foundation), ultimately shoving them in with the pre-chorus. So the composer wrote part of a verse… and the arranger turned that into part of the pre-chorus. Yeah, someone was playing a really extensive game of telephone, that’s for sure. This isn’t the only time an arranger has misunderstood the Seventeen system (something similar, although less noticeable, happened with Boom Boom) and it won’t be the last, but it’s good to know what we’re hearing here! Rather than totally switching up the instrumentation to match the change from vocals to rap, the instrumentation should have been based on the rest of the verse’s instrumentation; it was originally written as an extension on the verse. And this is especially a clusterfuck because Pristin already wrote two different musical motifs into the pre-chorus—that sing-rapped line and Kyla’s line—so adding 4 totally irrelevant bars to a PRE-CHORUS (which is supposed to be a really brief way of transitioning things) can be confusing.

I also personally think Kyla’s line there was a bit too amelodic, but if they were experimenting with a way to SING (rather than rap) their way into stagnancy, another way to deal with a melody you don’t want to resolve or leave unresolved, then I respect that, I’ll give that a lil’ head pat and let it be.

Now, let’s skip to the post-chorus, by which I mean that famous WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE!! The last line of the chorus, the line that resolves the melody, becomes a hook of the post-chorus, just like Adore U. There’re a lot of things good about this post-chorus; the instrumentation is such a fucking strong-point, and the quirks of this chorus are memorable— a sung hook made out of a rhythmically manipulated siren sound? And there’re real siren sounds incorporated into the song, and most importantly, it’s dynamic; the relationship between hard guitar/rhythm and the declining, quiet, subtle nature of this post-chorus is done very well. On its own, it’s lovable— so why might it not work? @basedtzuyu’s version where she cuts out the post-chorus actually sounds significantly more natural.

Well, this post-chorus doesn’t quite do what a post-chorus is supposed to do. A post-chorus, aside from being another chorus, is made to CONNECT INTO THE VERSE. In the same way a pre-verse connects to the chorus, the post-chorus must connect directly into the verse. Despite the fact that it’s built surprisingly similarly to the Adore U post-chorus, the Wee Woo post-chorus does not correctly make way for the verse. A post-chorus should not BUILD excitement, it simply doesn’t make sense. It stays where it is or gradually decreases excitement. It should be a double reward of melody resolution; one chorus finishes up and we go on to the next satisfying moment immediately because we’re hit with a double reward. We shouldn’t build all the way to the chorus’s resolution only for the post-chorus to drop down and build up again. And more importantly, building up the post-chorus WORSENS the transition into the verse instead of making it better. The post-chorus should be a satisfying descent into the verse. But on the 5th bar of the post-chorus, the drum kicks in and there’s an exciting synth, the addition of those siren sounds… It’s natural for some part of the brain to very quietly say, “Didn’t we already go through this?” We shouldn’t be building up right now. It makes the chorus and the verse additionally appear unsatisfying and leaves a more sour impression of the song, even though the chorus, post-chorus, and second verse actually have some interesting things about them!! Little mistakes like this can be a big deal! Mansae is VERY careful about build-up, and Wee Woo has no pacing.

Also notice that Mansae and Adore U descend excitement in post-choruses in a certain way. They start with an EXCITING HOOK!!! Then things descend and descend in energy… EXCITING HOOK!!! Descend, descending, verse. Just like that!!! Verse, right then, right there, a seamless transition!! Wee Woo doesn’t descend very well, however. Melodically, the same two bars are repeated without any descent, and if they absolutely insist on repeating that melody over and over, a descend can be hard… and what’s more, since the hook comes AFTER the instrumentation, it’s less clear that the melody should be getting less exciting even over the course of those two bars. Plus, the hook goes UP rather than going down, the instrumental bit before the hook is lower and therefore less exciting… Yeah. They made their jobs a lot harder.

Once they had this post-chorus that gets more exciting instead of resolving into the verse, they tried to patch-up the problem by making the last bar very bare and quiet compared to the others so the verse wouldn’t sound too boring, but it doesn’t fix the smell, it just adds a Febreeze on TOP of the smell.

That being said, I do think the 2nd verse does its job!! I think the rap should’ve been had an extra 4 bars at the beginning, but that’s okay! Moving on!

There’s only one section left to talk about and I’m not sure what to say because there ARE things here that’re kind of… out of my league to tackle, haha. The bridge, to my ears, doesn’t work but I can’t really tell you why. What I will say though, is that I don’t agree with @basedtzuyu that a bridge must be exciting. (Note: I’m assuming that by breakdown she meant bridge, since those things’re different.) Adore U’s bridge starts out chill and then picks up, adding excitement that pays off in the final chorus. But Wee Woo’s bridge, while attempting to do the same thing, doesn’t… sound consistent with the rest of the song, and I feel confused,,, about this,,, All that I can say is that they probably should’ve left emphasis on the off-beat during the bridge but that feels like it’s not a significant explanation enough AHAHAHA I TRIED

But hey!! I think I did alright on the rest!! Hope this satisfies HAVE A NICE DAY EVERYBODY *BLASTS ROLLER COASTER SO LOUD THAT YOU’LL HAVE TO GET OUT OF MY HOUSE* no but really ty for reading my super long post hehehheu youre appreciated officially now yes