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kpoplyricsanalysis · 5 years

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Chronosaurus - Stray Kids

Last episode we ended on a very dysphoric thought: "Divina Comedia" by G-Dragon brought us to the conclusion that we lack agency and our journey to self-consciousness ends up only on numbness.

Stray Kids' "Chronosaurus" faces another dysphoric issue - the devouring nature of time - but Stray Kids do not succumb to it, they keep fighting.

The lyrics are penned by the absolute geniuses that 3Racha are. The title is an invented word made up by chrono - meaning time in greek - and saurus, referring to reptiles and secondarily to dinosaurs. Chronosaurus is a play on word which refers to the kronosaurus and chrono as time, but it may also evoke the greek god Cronos or Kronos.

The Chronosaurus was one of the largest marine reptiles and also one of the biggest predators of the ocean. By substituting chrono to krono, the trio depicts time as a predatory and devouring creature and us as its preys.

In the first verse fear is reigning over Stray Kids, they keep running away from time but they cannot seem to find a sliver of light. Maybe they should succumb as 'They say time will solve everything' but Stray Kids know that time cannot solve anything because it only consumes us therefore 'those words just give me fear'.

We wait for time to heal our wounds but we do not realise that by waiting we will get trapped into time, so they do not surrender to fear, they decide to fight, to heal themselves: 'I need to do something/ I have no other way'. We are told time is precious, time is gold, but could it be a beast? Don't we all fear it? Don't we all run away from it? Don't we all exhaust ourselves and chant "there is no time" everyday?

Could the line 'When I get caught from hide and seek, is it me or is it a dream?' mean that the real price we pay to time is not us but our dreams? Could it mean that the only way to not get devoured by the Chronosaurus is only if we give up our dreams?

And then I wonder, is it really time the beastly creature or is it our fear? The pre chorus, after all, laments that 'Day and night, every day/ Fear holds onto me'.

In the chorus we hear them struggle for breath because 'I’m running endlessly/ Why is time running so quickly to me?'. And in the post chorus we hear the tick tock of time passing by. 3Racha have become desperate, like time is ever present and something that cannot be escaped: 'Feels like I’m trapped in an hourglass'. And they wonder, if maybe they should just stop, at least everything will be over: 'what do I do now?/ If I stop, it’s over'.

In the bridge, which is my favorite part, they reach the bottom of despair, they feel trapped in a 'tunnel with no light' and fear is reigning over them. The song ends with the chorus, reiterating that the only thing we can do is not surrender ourselves, not to wait for time to fade our scars. 'Hurry and run' because the only thing we can hope is that in the depths of the sea if we keep running the Chronosaurus won't see us.

However, if we consider the mythology of Kronos the song has another meaning. The mythology narrates that Uranus, father of Kronos, in fear of being dethroned by his offspring, imprisoned his own children. Kronos then, helped by his mother, mutilated his own father. Given a prophecy of Kronos having the same destiny as Uranus, Kronos decided to devour his children in fear that they might betray him like Kronos betrayed Uranus. The spouse of Kronos, Rea, managed to trick him and saved Zeus. Zeus made Kronos disgorge his siblings and with their help he fought his father.

Kronos, the parricidal Titan, father of Zeus and by Zeus dethroned. The self fulfilling prophecy narrated in this mythology gives the song an second meaning: just like Kronos, we are the devouring beast swallowing our offspring, owr own dreams, in order not to get consumed by them; by running away from time and its devouring nature we end up precisely in its trap: self consumption.

Do not get washed away into the sea of time, do not consume yourself in order to gain time because you won't ever gain leverage over the mighty beast. The silver lining is that our domain is ourselves, we can fight and wash out our own pain.

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kpoplyricsanalysis · 5 years

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Outro (Divina Comedia) - G-Dragon

Lately I’ve been having many conversations regarding the biggest oppositions humans come to face: good and evil, reason and emotion, identity and alterity, dream and reality. Every time I happen to ponder on these oppositions I always wonder “is it me?”, but then someone tells me how they feel like they have no control, how they feel uncertain as though they were floating on a stream oblivious to them. Then I think, and I hope, that maybe it’s collective, maybe it’s generational or maybe it’s our age.

In 2017 G-Dragon released an album he named with his real name: Kwon Jiyong, which is very telling. Released prior to his enlistment after turning 30 in Korean age, the album seeks to reveal the persona behind G-Dragon and his attempt to temporarily abandon the stage.

It is also revealing the fact that he chose to release the album as an USB, which has much to say on the music making in itself today (and caused much controversy on charting), but it is also a choice to convey the proximity of this album to the listener, engaging him in a game. The USB is something we use to save and transfer, to back up. But this meaning of residual, of permanence is contrasted by the transitory writing (with G-Dragon’s real name, birthdate and blood type) on the USB - which easily fades off - and by the fact that the USB in itself doesn’t have the songs it (the can be downloaded online). This model of distribution is not only interesting because it is certainly a new way to engage the listener, and not only is a meaningful commentary on the music industry, but it substantially conveys the meaning of the album: the impossibility to define one’s identity (Kwon Jiyong) and to confine it in memory or a medium, G-Dragon’s identity and music don’t exist as something, they are continuously deferred.

This album is probably the apex of his lyrical and artistical potential. It reflects on recurrent themes of GD, playing on the palindrome of GOD/DOG - which references his pseudonym G-Dragon - in Bullshit (the title in Korean being 개소리, literally dog noise), questioning his hallow status as a celebrity in Super Star, which is connected to the solitude and the crumbling of personal relationships in Middle Fingers Up. All songs are self-referential and rich of intertextual references and play with the concept of identity, solitude, good and bad, reality and dream.

All of these themes are condensed in the last track “Outro (Divina Comedia)”. The song’s meaning, aside of its lyrics, is conveyed by the amount of intertextual references (the following are not all) : through the lyrics there isn’t only Dante’s Divina Comedia - which is not just a reference, but it also shapes the structure of the album and tour - but also to the Truman Show. The song also features samples of Daft Punk’s track “Veridis Quo” in the album Discovery: the title, aside from the latin meaning and play on word “quo vadis” (where are you going, meaning what is the purpose?), it is also a play on word in it self - as “Veridis quo” can be read as Very Disco, therefore Discovery). It is again highlighted the centrality of the theme of discovery, not only that of Dante and the otherworldly, but the journey of finding and freeing oneself. It is at this point that come in questions such as what is right and what is wrong/evil, what is real and what is not, is the I/the persona an identity or alterity?

The first verse depicts the journey from the underground, the null, to fame and artist. During this journey, G-Dragon has contracted an occupational desease: he has focused his entire self and lost his I to his stage persona. And through this journey he discovers that his rise to fame is a fall, not into money and mundane things as we might think. While his fame is considered a success, it has depleted him of his youth and his growing up process: “While others grew, I listed stocks. That’s why I’m a little short”.

And while other people wonder at his status, at 30 years old (nel mezzo del cammin, halfway one’s life, which in Dante corresponds to 35yo) he begins to question the persona of G-Dragon and wonders who is Kwon Jiyong and his past, wonders if he is an exception or if he is normal. He feels lost and as Dante he seeks guidance, which comes through his mother. From assuring her that he is not the problem but the solution, his certainty crumbles in the chorus: in the impossibility to distinguish right from wrong, the only clarity is that “everyone a sinner”. He assures his mother that while he can be a sinner, he is trying to do what is right and we cannot judge, because our lives are entirely subjective. If we cannot discern our rights and wrongs, how can others? The only consolation is that “we are all the same”.

But it is not enough, because what can seem as a discovery, the realization of the impossibility to apply manicheistic oppositions to our lives doesn’t lead to our freedom, to change: in the post chorus there is an almost inaudible and heavily modified cry for help, “Gone, I’m numb”.

The third and fourth verse examine the disintigration of identity and the lack of meaning to our lives. We reach that point in our lives where we realise that we are entirely lost and when we thought that our lives could lead to a meaning we end up discovering that none of the categories we pondered about apply to our lives “Putting our lives on the line to self-hypnotize ourselves”. Not only they don’t apply, but our entire life is spent trying to hypnotize ourselves, to mask our alterity with prosthesis of meaning, of identity, of concreteness. This realisation comes at once and “if the waves of life come crashing” G-Dragon invites us to “ride it” and warns us on not to “get swept away”.

The complete dis-covery and un-covery comes in the bridge. G-Dragon comes to the conclusion that “we all live in our own world” and as such we create and complete its meaning by acting like we are “on stage, planning, production, screenplay, directing, main leads”. In this game where we confuse and fuse our aspirations with our reality, our life becomes something other, a simulation: “in our dreams, unreality is reality, Truman Show”. As a result we end up trapped in the same game we made.

It is at this point that we see not only the faux being of G-Dragon, but also that Kwon Ji Young is an artefact, the simulacrum of his aspirations, idealization. There is indeed no such thing as identity, as absolution, as right or wrong, there is no ascent to paradise; our journey to self discovery ends up only, as the song does with the post-chorus, in numbness.

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kpoplyricsanalysis · 5 years

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Codex Gigas - Bang Yongguk

In Bang Yongguk’s album there is a track named Codex Gigas. The Codex Gigas, or Giant Code, is believed to be the biggest medieval manuscript. It is also known as the Devil’s Bible due to a full page representation of the devil. Many are the legends regarding the monk and the creation of this code but what is interesting to me, in relation to the song, is the fact that its representation of the city of Heaven depicts no one in it.

Bang Yongguk opens with a reflection of humanity’s destructive drive but it is not yet a cynical consideration of the human being because

Destruction is the mother of creation. Hatred is the father of love

Men are self consciously criticized as born angels who become vile beings, in their aspiration to compensate to their faulty evil nature, they end up just like that:

Man wants to be a God but he is so weak, I want to hide its essence

Bang later defines humans, me, you, himself as the “true demon”. We tend to represent evil as otherness, as a Devil. However, as Bang notes, the true evil is you. He does not offer a resolution, perhaps because there is still no one. In the end of the song we are invited to wake up, to become self aware of our devilishly being. In order to change ourselves, we have to see what we are. But my pessimistic view is that we won’t ever be able to absolve ourselves. We are inherently faulty beings who imagine a holy city, but we cannot imagine inhabitants in it.

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