BTOB & Stray Kids KINGDOM 'I'll Be Your Man' Double Header DEEP DIVE ANALYSIS

Late comment because I just became a member for Forestella but im a huge BTOB fan (Melody is the fandom). Forestella are the 'idols of the crossover world'. BTOB are the kings of harmony in the idol world. i recommend BTOB's Killing voice

It’s crazy to me that SKZ got such low marks for this performance compared to the other groups. I think the feedback was that they focused more on the performance aspect than really adapting the song to “be their own”. But it seemed like they were really focused on referencing hyunjin and their support for him in their performance.

My personal opinion on the meaning of the lyrics is that the original is about messing up and begging for another chance, and longing so much for that love that they’re asking for divine intervention; I don’t think they’re actually dead. However, much like how you can make the same movie have a totally different vibe depending on how you edit & score the trailer, I think they said, “wow, these lyrics could mean something way more dramatic” and then conveyed that through the performance & arrangement. The youtuber/singer Chase Holfelder is GREAT at doing this, generally by changing a song to minor key and/or changing the tempo. My personal favorite is his cover of Animal by Neon Trees.

It really all depends with these korean kpop competition shows. Kingdom was kind of a unique case (and just a SLIGHT correction.....the BTOB stage you were watching was just a stage they did while promoting the song. Whenever kpop groups release a title track, the normal path is to go on one of about a half dozen stage shows that each network has....so when you hear kpop fans mention Inkiigayo or M Show Countdown or Show!Music Show, these are just one of these weekend shows that kpop groups perform at during promotion period) Back to Kingdom (the stray kids version and an ACTUAL competition show), it was a little unique bc it was smack dab in the middle of Covid so there wasn't an audience. In regards to autotuning it or brushing up the sound a little......the network will do that for the official YT release and most all of these competition show has some sort of tv audience vote system. However, normally, there will be crowds and an audience that vote right then and there and they are obviously hearing not what gets cleaned up a little for the TV or YT audience. I've heard both in various competition shows......fully live vs MR allowed. it's really up to the network thats airing the show whether to allow it or not. At the very least though, they are definitely more live compared to a typical weekend show (BTOB is just a different animal who always sings live for the most part) And a little side note......for BTOB, it's pronounced B-To-B (it's short for Born To Beat) and Eunkwang's name is pronounced without the Y sound. You were saying Yoonkwang.....it's pronounced more like oonkwang

You talked about liking raw vocals so I wanted to suggest something. Straykids have uploaded some Videos that show them in the recording studio. Its just really simply them working on their Songs so you see 3Racha in their producer role giving direction aswell as the members doing the recordings, making mistakes and adjustments and all that. I think it would give you a really good idea of their raw voices but also their personalities. I really think this could be fun🫣 https://youtu.be/YMb3EHXjs50?si=DcTwq-1mTfvwdDCT

I would again recommend putting Kingdom: Legendary War on your full-length reaction list for later! I've mostly watched the Stray Kids performances but I have watched a few full episodes and it's really neat how the groups talk about their approach to the challenges, and it's always a very playful spirit. These groups, as someone else mentioned, are established already at the point of this show. The competition is more for clout / showing off, they aren't competing for their careers like a lot of American reality/competition shows. So they are competitive in a playful way but they still support each other and are very impressed by the other group performances. ALSO as you saw with Love Poem, the groups will intermingle for certain challenges. I remember Felix does a crazy acrobatic stunt performing with another group, as Bang Chan is watching from the reaction room, and the way he stands up and says "FELIX??" its like he's a concerned dad. It cracks me up every time.

I think you also might have gotten Han and Seungmin mixed up in your video around 28:50 - Seungmin starts the song and then shortly after it transitions to Han and that's the part I think you were listening to.

I think others said this in more detail but to clarify: on Kingdom, this episode was a challenge where the groups each had to cover a song from a DIFFERENT group in the competition. So Stray Kids covered BTOB's song "I'll be your man", while BTOB covered Stray Kid's song "back door". I'm not sure when/where BTOB performed the one you watched but it was good :) You can always watch the official music video later as well. Hyunjin also was not involved in this Stray Kids Kingdom performance. I don't know much about it but he was on hiatus I think for allegations around bullying. I don't know how it all shook out but he obviously came back later. You mentioned the arrangement - yes in the full episode where they include the lead-up to the performances, Bang Chan talks about the re-arranging that they did. This whole dance break as well, not in the original song. They took a sad, somewhat poppy love song and made it very Stray Kids 😂 with a demon sacrifice and everything I.N. also had an emotional moment after this performance because he felt like he didn't do as well as he could have done on the vocals. So far I haven't seen ANYONE say anything negative about his performance here but they did get pretty poor "expert ratings" in scoring part of this episode and he was really down about that, feeling like it was his fault. It's very sweet to see how the other members supported him, tried to cheer him up.

Kingdom is a competition show between established groups in the industry, and is largely performance-based! It is actually a sequel to Queendom, which had the same concept but with female groups. Like others have mentioned, the BTOB performance was a promotional stage KPOP groups commonly do to promote new releases, hence the discrepancy in staging. Also important to note: the BTOB performance was from years before Kingdom, and the BTOB that appeared on Kingdom are fewer members than the original 7 that appeared in the promotional stage. I really adore BTOB's music, and they're famous for being a very vocal-focused group. Their ballads are widely beloved, like Missing You which won many domestic awards. :)

Hi, im new here and i loved this!! A correction, BTOB performance wasn't part of Kingdom, its on one of the music shows they promote new songs (from when they first released it, so years before kingdom), that is why is simpler. On Kingdom, SKZ did a cover of their song (the performance you watched) while BTOB did a cover of a SKZ song (Back Door, i love their cover too btw), the challenge for that round (RE BORN) was to make their own version of each other songs. Im glad how much you noticed the changes from SKZ version, they actually got last place for that performance (by judges evaluation) and everyone was speachless because it was so good but I've seen some comments saying that it was probably because it was too similar to the original and i never understood that because to me it sounds totally different, they not only changed the arrangement and order but also the lyrics, general meaning and even added a new rap verse (the first rap from Changbin) and dance break. About the lyrics what i understand is that the original from BTOB is about losing a lover (a girl) and desperately praying to get her back but it never specified if that person died or if the relationship just ended, it could be anything but the fact is she is no loger beside them. SKZ changed the lyrics and made the whole performance about what you guessed, basically they are singing about losing someone precious to them (they dont metion gender or specify in the lyrics, it could be anyone they loved, not necessarily romantic, and in the performance it's represented by the little boy), that person died (thats why they are singing to the statue of the boy that died) and they are praying and begging to bring him back to life saying they would do anything to make that happen, thats basically the lyrics. In terms of the performance they start asking for the help of the angels and god but they are rejected and fall from heaven so they go to hell and make a pact with the devil (thats why they distorted the voice to represent talking with the devil while everything starts breaking and finally they do like the blood pact) and they give their own lifes to bring the boy back to life (they put the heart or stone that they got from the devil on the statue of the boy and at the end they all die and the little boy is alive again, the statue disappears and the resurrected boy hugs Chan that gave his live for him). I really love that performance, they wanted to show their vocals because most people knew them only for their energy, rap and performances but didn't really know their vocals at the time. Also they basically dedicated their whole performance to another member that couldn't be on Kingdom because he was on hiatus (nobody was sure if he would be able to comeback to the group so it was like they were actually singing to him and they even left a few hints of that in the performance) so it was really emotional for them and the fans.

You got a bit misleaded on the competition part. The BTOB performace was not a Kingdom Performance but just a regular live performace they did. In Kingdom BTOB actually did a Cover of a straykids song instead (Its called Backdoor its also really good). Thats why the Format is so diffrent, its just simply two diffrent shows😆 While Kingdom was a competition, the groups themselfs where really not as focused on that. All their interactions where really positiv and supportive, BTOB basicly all but adopted straykids (apperantly Minhyuks house even turned into a second Dorm for them) 😂😂 So while there was a whole point and ranking System we dont really care.