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Music Recommendation : Dreamy K-pop

A fan of dreamy, magical K-pop songs? Here are some of my personal favourites that you should add to your playlist!

✦ Virtual Angel - ARTMS

✦ Shooting Star - Kep1er

✦ Chowall - tripleS

✦ Enhanced Flower - tripleS EVOLution

✦ LOONATIC - LOONA Odd Eye Circle (listen to boycott ver!)

✦ Ditto - NewJeans

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Music Recommendation: Indonesian Midwest Emo

Midwest emo refers to the emo scene and/or subgenre with unconventional vocal stylings, distinct guitar riffs and arpeggiated melodies with indie rock/math rock approaches. Here are some of my favourite Midwest emo songs from Indonesian artists! ✦ Pudar - Murphy Radio ✦ We Should​’​ve Left Our Hearts In The South Where They First Met - Beijing Connection ✦ Stay For The Night - MIKA ✦ Decayed Blossom - Asianfusion ✦ Geophilus - Integral ✦ your head as my favourite bookstore - eleventwelfth

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Music Analysis: Backburner - Niki

“Hey, are you still there? Good.” ━ Hope and Despair of Niki’s Backburner.

Have you ever been in a situation where you are the second choice of someone you adore most? This is the perfect song for you who have or are experiencing the same thing.

Nicole Zefanya, also known as NIKI, is an Indonesian singer-songwriter under the record label 88rising. She has been a hot topic lately amongst the recent generation with ever-better songs, such as “Every Summertime” and “Highschool in Jakarta.” In this post, we will discuss one of her tracks from her full-length studio album “Nicole” with the title “Backburner.”

Being on the back burner is an idiom for something being temporarily not being dealt with or considered, especially because it is not urgent or important. This is how Niki portrays unrequited love in the song titled Backburner. The song delves into the deep realm of heartbreak and yearning for unreciprocated love with the same frequency. To summarise, Backburner is about being the “second option” in someone’s love relationship despite showing love and attention to the person. Though there are bits of hope that the relationship could’ve been something more for the better, there are still struggles and despair throughout the song.

Let’s name the two personas in the song story as Niki and person A. The first part of the song explains the situation between the two people in the relationship, with the line ‘I can’t lie it feels nice that you’re calling / You sound sad and alone, and you're stalling.’ They’re living in an on-off relationship, with A returning to Niki whenever they need her attention and care. Foolish for her, she stayed for A every time they needed. To add to the scheme, Niki doesn’t care a single bit about the conversation, as long as they keep talking. Even though it might’ve hurt her, she’s glad that A’s calling her. The song escalates to Niki reminiscing their past, about how much they’ve made it through the storm. The lyrics ‘Asian Calvinism, we made it out of that’ explain their precious shared experience throughout their relationship before. Niki does realize that her choices are wrong, and she never learns her lesson despite knowing it. The pre-chorus talks about how A kept talking about their past, explained through the line ‘The Goo Goo Dolls are dead to me / But you bring them up’ which makes Niki long for A’s existence. Their relationship should’ve ended times back, but they kept on going as her desire to have a better relationship grew.

‘Maybe I'm just not better than this, I haven't tried / Maybe life's less romantic when I don't wanna die’ talks about how Niki felt that she wasn’t doing enough in the relationship, not willing to risk herself for the romance part in their life. She pushes the idea of her not doing what she’s supposed to do. She does it because she could never get her love to be reciprocated by A, although her effort might not be the actual problem. Niki thinks that A would think that she’s a fast learner, learning from her mistakes. But instead, she drowned in that small spark of hope and accepted being a backburner in their current relationship.

Moving to the second verse, Niki’s pathetic self still appreciates the fact that A still calls her every time they need help from her. ‘How do you feel lucky and appalled at the same time?’ tells about how she’s slowly getting tired of A begging at her, though she’s happy that she’s lucky enough; Lucky enough that A still needs her despite living as a second choice. Even after everything that had happened to them, Niki still puts hope and trust in A. Then, comes ‘But I know in a week or so / You'll fade away again’ which explains how Niki is used to this relationship. The relationship where A comes to her only when they need to then disappears as if nothing ever happened. As the title of the post, ‘Hey, are you still there? Good’ explains hope mixing with despair as Niki wishes that A is there with her, desperately asking for A’s presence. It’s portrayed as if they were on a call they used to do, with A disappearing on the other side of the phone. Both parts of the song describe her low self-esteem and evolving co-dependency to A.

The second chorus served new lyrics, such as ‘Maybe I blame my mother bleeding into my stride / Maybe it was my father and his wandering eyes’ suggesting an unhealthy lifestyle of her family. Her mother taught her how to act as her father is always thinking about someone else despite being in a relationship. These two aspects made her reliant on this second-choice relationship subconsciously. The song ends with an outro with lyrics repetition of ‘Backburner’ as if Niki’s convincing herself that it’s fine to be A’s backburner. The part ended with ‘As long as you still think of me’ as it highlights the parts before clearer.

The rhythm and tempo of “Backburner” provides an uneasy sense of urgency in the narration. The key of the song also complements these aspects, making the song somehow heart-breaking yet optimistic. Despite the slightly complicated wording style of Niki herself, the message of the song is easily comprehensible as you listen through it over time. Overall, it is an intellectual masterpiece to the mind of the listener.

The song choice is because I have experienced it personally, though it might not be fully a “second-choice” type of relationship situation. It’s crazy how the lyrics resonate to me so smoothly as if it was flowing through my blood. I personally relate to the co-dependency and yearning cut. If I was told “please”, I might do anything but ignore the fact that I was competing in a losing game. Anxiety and overthinking are also a common characteristic of unrequited love, which is presented in the lyrics of the song. I feel like I’m ready to do anything as long as I can feel the same love back, even if that means crying in the corner of my room from never feeling enough. And, this song is the perfect theme for it. This song is exactly what I feel, and I thank Niki for creating this beautiful track. The moral of the story? Learn how to move on from that deep hole of uncertainty and pain. Or maybe, you could play this song on repeat while you’re at it. Krow’s signing off!