Battle of the B-Sides:: RAINZ- Music up

 Next up from the Roulette Wheel that I made of songs I could theoretically cover this month, we have a Produce 101 S2 era project group. I'm not going to turn this into a NU'EST adjacent post, so insert the applicable connections as though I've already said them. Now, that being said, one of my favorite things that happens post-survival shows, especially the big ones that are backed by the major broadcasting companies, is the number of smaller project groups that pop up made up of former participants. They don't usually last much longer than the debuting group from the show, but they're usually a very interesting composition of the trainees. AB6IX could be considered such a group, for instance. 

RAINZ debuted in October of 2017 and disbanded in October of 2018 as a seven-member group, all of whom have debuted as soloists since then and two of which debuted in other groups later. The majority of the members of RAINZ were between ranks 31 and 62 when they were eliminated, and one was an outlier at rank 83. Good job to them for their hard work back on the show and equally good job of being loved enough by the fans to get this opportunity. 

Music up was the pre-release track for their second mini album in January 2018, which means it is a b-side, not a title track even though it is a single. And the names attached to the songwriting for this song had my eyebrows raising. First up, as lyricists and composers, we have Lee Gikwang of BEAST and Highlight (BEAST, BTOB, and Highlight) and Ju Chan Yang (EXO, NCT (including Vitamin), RIIZE, Super Junior, BOYNEXTDOOR, The Boyz, GOT7, Pristin, P1Harmony, TVXQ!, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, B.A.P, ZEROBASEONE, SF9, Cha Eunwoo, HIGHLIGHT, IZ*ONE, TRCNG, AIMERS, Lee Jun Young, 2PM, Shinhwa, Kangta, UKISS, Lee Gikwang, UNB, LABOUM, VIXX, HOTSHOT, and Shannon). Kim Tae Sung (Girls' Generation, EXO, Seventeen, P1Harmony, GIFT, SM the Ballad, BoA, Super Junior, BE:FIRST, NCT, UNB, Shannon, SHINee, SF9, LABOUM, INFINITE, 1THE9, Kim Sejeong, Lee Gikwang, ALICE, HIGHLIGHT, GOT7, NU'EST (and actually my favorite of their title tracks), Cherry Bullet, Shinhwa, TVXQ!, Shownu, G.NA, DIA, History, UKISS, Eric Nam, After School, RAINBOW, and V.O.S) and Secret Weapon (MAVE, JJ Project, B.A.P, 1VERSE, GOT7, TWICE, Cha Eunwoo, Jiselle, 2PM, LUN8, Weeekly, ICHILLIN', Sanha, Changsub, LABOUM, Ailee, SKYE, Lee Gikwang, and Cherry on Top) were also lyricists, with the latter also functioning as the arranger for the song. 

I was hoping for a music video since it was a pre-release. Insert a heavy sigh here. Oh, well. 

It actually weirdly fits with this group as a whole though. Warning, I may get a bit sentimental during this post. 

From another group, a song that's about having a good time in the moment would be basically the ultimate chill hype song. This is a party song, complete with the crowd-enthusing vocalizations that practically demand the audience join in during live performances, but, and I think this might be a little controversial because I'm pretty sure people are going to expect me to say the exact opposite, this would be the perfect concert opener. 

Think about it.

You expect concert openers to be big and explosive, to announce the performers with energy to get people on their feet and jumping, or to wow the audience with a complicated display using the dancers, costuming, and props. You do not expect, especially songs as oddly summery as this one considering it was released in January, the concert to start with something gently asking.

Which is exactly why it would be a good choice. Instead of making both audience and performers go full tilt right at the start, wouldn't it be fun to start with something a bit more casual and then increase the energy over the next three or four songs? A little bit of a warm-up song, so to speak?

Which is also funny because as a pre-release, that's exactly the function of this song: a warm-up for the album. 

But because it has those vocalizations for the audience to sing along, regardless of whether or not they're part of a fanchant, and they're repeated regularly enough even for people who don't know the song well to pick up on it quickly, this song is fully designed to pull people in and say "You want to have a fun time with us? Let's go." For a group this short-lived (by design or circumstance), that kind of an invitation has a very different feel to it than from a group that's survived twenty years.

And what is the beginning of the concert meant to do? Get people hooked on the concert.

Which is why, even though this has all the hallmarks of a mid-concert or an encore song, I think this would actually make a wonderful opener. 

I say that because I'm not finding any performances on the music shows, which means the only thing we've got for this song in terms of live performances are the fancams and surprisingly a dance practice! Not that I'm complaining because I'm just glad there are any performances, you know?

We're going to start with a fancam that I'm assuming had bad or unclear audio when it was recorded, and then it was uploaded with the studio track. Why are we starting with this one? Because it's the oldest one I found and there are a couple of very charming moments.

Full disclosure, I have no idea who any of them are and no one has made a color-coded lyrics for this song, which is both highly frustrating for me because I cannot be as accurate as I like to be and also understandable because of the nature of this group and the smaller fandom that they will naturally have had (and perhaps still have) through no fault of their own.

So they apparently had Japan promotions in March of 2018, which was when this song was performed. And thank you to the uploader. I would like to say thank you for preserving as much of this performance as you did.

So fun things from this performance. I'm going to use the term center to refer to the one who is in front and/or is the one whose part is currently being performed. 

At :12, the center holds up a peace sign to his face and smiles, which is adorable. 

The fastest fingerheart known to man happens at :34. Technically it's at :35, but again, I saw it on my first watch and it took me five times of watching this video again to catch it because he is that fast with it. So you're getting a whole second of runway time to catch it.

At :59, the one who then moves up into the center for his part sings along with the "Everybody" part right there. It's a good thing they're all using hand mics.

The second one from the right side of the screen and the one just to the center's left (from our point of view, the one next to the blond) at 1:56. Watch them. They are just enjoying themselves with that part of the song, and they're all smiles too. I like that.

At 2:44, we've got both the members to the center's right singing "Everybody" along with the center while they're doing those hip movements. But the blond to his left? He's feeling himself right there. That's not his part, but he is feeling it. 

At 2:53, you've got the red-haired member and the one partially cut off in the very left of the screen exchange a look and smiles.

As a side note, the one in the center at 1:43 looks so much like my boy JR, especially around that time period. And, the member to his left, the right side of the screen, looks quite a bit like Jeonghan.

What's interesting is that you can tell what parts are backtrack only with this performance though. The vocalizations at 1:09, while the center is singing along because that one apparently really likes this song, and following that are mostly while he has his mic down. For the one at 1:17, he may have forgotten to bring his hand back down, which is fine and adorable. And because the audio got replaced for whatever reason, we can't verify certain things.

I just realized that YouTube has been making me watch this on 360p. So that's fixed and I can see details. I hate this. I hate it when YouTube does this to me because I apparently mentally default back to the days of when YouTube first came out and I don't automatically go "Oh, I should check the quality." Because 144p was what we got and we liked it. And now I sound like a grumpy old-timer shaking my fist at the clouds.

Okay, this performance was from the Korea Festival in Bangkok four months later. And yes, I checked the resolution first so I wasn't fighting to see details.

And this is actually a really good angle to look at the choreography, so if we didn't have a dance practice, I'd probably be using this one for that. But I don't have to. 

I will gently point out though that the members have fancy feet that I'm excited to talk about later. I love it when choreography has fancy feet.

We've got the live audio for this one because we've got audience cheers this time around, so there's at least a chance to have live vocals. And we do! Thank you, whichever member you are at 1:32, for making it very obvious that we are listening to at least partially live vocals because of the doubled vocals that we're listening to. And someone goes a little off-pitch at 2:23 so we thank him for his service in proving that. But you can also hear his vibrato, a little bit later, so I'm not mad.

Once again, we've got the center at :08 doing a light little bit of fanservice with a heart over his head. A lot of the same suspects from the first performance are also smiling and bright over this performance, which is really nice to see considering how short-lived the group was.

This is from KCon 2018 Japan.

And right off the bat, it sounds like we may have some live vocals. First of all, at :25, whichever member that is, he does not come in cleanly, which is not a criticism because we are supportive of the live vocals in this blog and this is not the space where I would offer critiques if I can help it. There's a different vibrato pattern at :53 that actually kind of clashes with the backtrack. And at 1:21, the member that's singing is just slightly off-pitch. And the one at 2:37 is a little bit more off-pitch. But! Again! This is good! Because we love hearing evidence of live vocals here! Especially when it's not perfect!

And they're whooping! It's fun!

It's time for the choreography. Now, I've been trying not to pay too much attention to the choreography because I knew we had this video to look forward to.

But! As it says in the description of the video, the choreography was made by one of the members! Eunki! How cool is that?

And there's a little bit of goofiness happening right at the beginning. We've got one member spinning on one leg and then another one making a sound I can only describe as a venting of stress and tension. I love that. I really do.

There are a lot of little ripples throughout the song, either from movement from the group or in the form of very tightly controlled body rolls. We get some stomping at :46, which is audible so that's good to be hearing and seeing, especially since it's a single sound we're hearing.

I love that formation and the movements at 1:13, and it looks like those angles are probably about 92% in sync, which is delightful and very impressive. 

And the fancy feet at 1:30! They've got fancy feet and backwards movement and it looks so cool! I also really love how there are a couple of spots built into the choreography to allow the members a few seconds to just breathe. 

This is just a fun song that isn't super ambitious, but it does what it can and it is very good at being what it is. Which is a fun dance track that, had the group been able to be even a little bit longer-lived, would have easily become a fan-favorite.

And yes, I'm still convinced that this would make an excellent opener to a concert.

Thanks for reading, everyone! I know that this is a smaller group that you're unlikely to be familiar with, so thank you for taking that risk and getting to know them a little bit better. As I always say, while disbanded groups sometimes give you the Sad and sometimes the Mad, they are nice in a way because when you watch any kind of content of them, you're watching them preserved at a time when they still had hope and a future. I know I said I might get sappy and sentimental, but I really tried not to.

If you've got any more songs you'd like me to cover, do send me a comment or a submission via The Form. I love seeing what you all love. The next song is old-school K-Pop from a group that debuted before everyone in ATEEZ was born. 

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