Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know how popular and big K-Pop has gotten here in the U.S. in the past couple of years.
Many people still don’t understand why, but to try and spell it out for you, it really has a lot to do with the next level of artistry that gets put into these albums and songs. A prime example of that is NCT’s track, “Black on Black,” from their NCT 2018 EMPATHY album.
The track itself is very jarring and intense, but in the best way possible. It has different synths and beats, all layered with different layers of vocals. When you watch the music video for the track, you see the insane yet always in sync choreography that goes so well with the song, almost like it was made to perfectly match it.
Well, turns out, it was.
Media personality and YouTuber Racquel Goldy sat down with singer and record producer, Josh Cumbee — who has worked with the likes of TVXQ, BoA, TAEYEON, NU’EST, and NCT—and they discussed Cumbee’s work on “Black on Black.”
Cumbee revealed that when working on the track, the producers actually had the choreography of the song first, before anything else.
“The crazy thing about this [‘Black on Black’]…I don’t know if this is commonly known or not, but we had the choreography first,” Cumbee said. “I had a video of the choreography and it was like, ‘Okay, we gotta figure out what to do for this.’”
If you’ve seen the choreography, you can only imagine how difficult it was to make a song that not only compliments it but takes it to the next level.
“Those guys are so talented, just watching them dance, was like ‘I don’t even know how I can make anything musically that can live up to that amount of skill that’s going into this,’” Cumbee added on.
Goldy then asks whether he and the rest of the producers had any direction as to what SM Entertainment wanted the song to go in and Cumbee explains that although there were some guidelines, they mostly had to give a sound to each movement in the choreography.
“The vibe was in the choreography, the movement and everything was just there,” Cumbee explained. “It all just kind of became ‘What does this move sound like?’.”
If NCTzens didn’t already love and appreciate “Black on Black,” they definitely will now.
Check out the rest of Racquel’s interview with Josh down below where he talks more about his work in the K-Pop music scene as well as his own.
Did you know that the choreo for “Black on Black” came before the actual song? Leave your reaction down below and let us know your thoughts on Twitter @celebsecrets.
