HyunA’s “Babe” — An alternative for the beginning of the end of the “pop-drop”

Pop music has never been the same since the key point of songs became the post-chorus with little or no vocals and a hook mostly composed of notes played by synthesizers. It’s called “pop-drop”, and it went from a trend to become a standard in pop music. Billboard announced it as “the sound of 2016”, but we’re only 3 months away from 2018 and this sound doesn’t seem about to go away.

It’s no different in K-pop, where not only the pop-drop but also the accompanying genre trends such as tropical house, synthpop, EDM and trap music, have been dominating the sound of most hits for a year or so.

If Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” can be considered the mark for the beginning of the trend/standard for Western mainstream pop music, BTS’s “Blood, sweat and tears” is the K-pop equivalent. Since then, the majority of K-pop songs, especially the ones from boygroups, have been hitting on the synthesized tropical-house-ish hook, although the absence of a sung-chorus is less felt here than in Western music, as we get in Winner’s “Really really”, Seventeen’s “Don’t wanna cry”, EXO’s “Ko ko bop”, B1A4’s “Rollin’”, and many others.

Recently, though, one song walked a path slightly different. It came from a female soloist, Korea’s favorite rebel girl HyunA, and it’s called “Babe”.

What certainly surprised people about “Babe” was HyunA’s more relaxed and sometimes even innocent posture in the music video (compared to what she has shown before); however, from the songwriting and production point of view, the song also offers a different perspective of a very replayed pattern.

It is, indeed, a pop song with synthesizers and influences from tropical house and trap music, but instead of putting the synthesizers as the stars of the song after a chorus that feels like a post-chorus, like most songs often do, in “Babe” the synthesized melody takes place in lines 3 and 4 of the first verse.

Hearing the sound that we’ve been so familiar with right in the beginning of the song makes the listener comfortable with it, so the song can go on and lead to a regular chorus and a sung post-chorus, instead of a “drop” one.

Of course this is not the only thing that makes “Babe” work; there is the overload of production and melody changes that is K-pop’s trademark (like a transition to trap after the first post-chorus, for example), and the contemporary tricks for non boredom (very short intros, smaller verses and pre-chorus so we can get to the chorus as fast as possible etc) too.

However, it is refreshing to see a song that doesn’t shy away from the standard yet does not channel it so consummately either.

Maybe we’re not ready to say goodbye to the “pop-drop”, but it will surely come the day when it has to go, so for now, it might be a good alternative to subtly move the drop to other sections of the song, until it comes the day that we won’t miss it anymore.