Frank Kogan

In part one I'd charted "a frequent version of verse-chorus form" as follows, saying that this was the form of "Volume Up":

( chart )



It actually starts with an introduction, where we get the muted sax sample, and what I was calling the "break" was just the second half of the middle eight. Teasing out the parts:

0:00 Intro: muted, moody sax, sets the serious tone that the song will subsequently embellish, lampoon, demolish, reassert, etc., meanwhile, underneath, a keyboard suggests a dance and a counterrhythm → 0:16 1st part of verse: HyunA lays out the predicament but also ends each line with a flourish of staccato syllables, "naw-aw aw-aw-aw, naw-aw aw-aw-aw," "heh-eh eh-eh-eh, wah-ah ah-ah-ah" that, while not being out-and-out parody, are amusing enough to detach HyunA from the anguish that the music is pretending to establish (I'm at a loss to convey how good this is/she is: I imagine her singing each syllable with a vertically oval open mouth while making her eyes as round as her mouth, in faux innocence [EDIT: though perhaps JiYoon or GaYoon is the syllable singer; see Update 2 below]); reading this socially, I'd say that the operatic syllables signal the song's ambitiousness but that the actual sound comes from comic opera, so creates a sense of incipient hilarity → 0:29 2nd part of verse: GaYoon does a couple of vocal descents, not too heavily but with the pang and heat that reminds us there is some angsty young-and-in-unhappy-love business here; back in the mix, piano continues hopping along, readying us for the dance → 0:45 prechorus: GaYoon carries over from the previous part with a long note, something between a wail and a canopy, with HyunA returning, down at ground level, now as a rapper, pushy and tough and teasing and beneficently benign all at once, the music pounding and rising in a slate-cleaning crescendo, "everybody, TIME TO ROCK" → 0:59 chorus: JiYoon grabs the banner as the pounding boshbeat rides us across the battlefield; this doesn't feel like a cathartic chorus so much as the song launching itself forward, JiYoon amplifying the emotion and jabbing us with some savage "eh-eh eh-ehs" of her own → 1:15 second part of chorus: and like GaYoon before her, JiYoon launches herself atop the proceedings and splashes down on the moody sax that mellows us out a little, while a singer — I'm not sure who — pulls some syllabic "oh oh oh-oh ohs" off the grill and starts juggling them to remind us of opera and joy and open-mouthed emotion.

( Second verse more or less same as the first )

Which brings us to → 2:43 middle eight: for four bars we've got JiHyun delicately wandering parks and fields, the melody doing the venture-to-distant-chords-and-return thing that I tried to understand back in college but never did; rest of 4minute do something that's probably formal or choral or ???? enough to be called "polyphony"; next four bars are the same except with the sax taking JiHyun's place and being more diffuse and less appealing → ( stuff about lyrics )

( Update: All hail JiYoon )

( Song form and Hot Issue )

So, is there a distinctively American equivalent to bosh? Seems to me that snap and bubblecrunk and Houston's screwed 'n' chopped thing and whatever it is they call the stuff from Memphis all have potential but are probably too not-completely unearnest underneath and just not hysterically boshin' enough. The closest to a bosh equivalent might be juke. Or maybe if you sped up Miami bass.

But bosh is more embracing than I think juke is.