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Build Up, Ep 5 Recap: The Neglected Performances

Welcome back to the one of the top twenty best Build Up recaps out there! In the previous one, we saw an adoring junior take on his senior. In this one, we’ll talk about the four performances that MNET saw fit to skip almost completely.

So yeah, MNET saw fit to just unceremoniously fly through a total of four performances in less time than they spent on most of the other single performances. I’m so mad I feel like I could spontaneously combust. Where is Junyheok and Yeo One’s fire extinguisher?

MNET spent about a minute per round (ie, less than 30 seconds on each performance) but I’ll go through a little more carefully.

First up is Hyukjin and Jeong Inseong versus Lee Minwook and Jang Intae.

I’ll remind you who everyone is as we go along, since MNET hates all eight of these guys for no reason.

Hyukjin is from an unfortunately VERY nugu group called Fave1. He was in the Power group, V22, the one who sang that heavy metal sounding song. I mean, he frickin’ went for it, I’ll give him that. He wore that red suit on the first day. He performed in the Kajima Kajima (Don’t Go) group, and was made Low Tier just because everyone else did a bit better, not because he did badly. He seems to have lightened his hair a little bit since the Pre-4 round.

Jeong Inseong is from a group called KNK. He was a V6, in the Allround section, and I remember really liking that first performance (my notes just read, “ooh, I like!”). He was in Breath, and along with Hwanhee, was sort of a go-to backstage reaction king during the whole Pre-4 mission. We didn’t hear what the judges thought of his performance one where or the other, but I thought he had a smooth, rich voice.

They’ve decided to sing a song called Still Love You, originally performed by Lee Hongki and Yoo Hweseung. If you watched either You’re Beautiful (the Hong sisters k-drama) or Produce48, you’re familiar with Lee Hongki; he was Jeremy in You’re Beautiful and he was the cool, Japanese-speaking vocal coach in Produce48. But of course, you might know him as a member of FT Island. Hweseung was on PD101 Season 2. Now he is the main vocalist of N Flying, and I think he has a glorious voice. So yeah, I like both these guys.

The song itself isn’t my thing, but that’s fine, it doesn’t have to be. The lyrics are just typical K-ballad material -- “I love you and I’ll miss you and I will never forget you but I nobly hope you’ll be happy” blah blah. You know the drill.

Full version here.

My thoughts:

Overall, I actually like their version better than the original. I’m not a huge fan of the song itself, but I like the way they sing it.

Hyukjin is the weaker of the two vocalists, which is a bummer because I root for anyone who gets less than 10,000 views on his MVs. He still has a very nice voice. He just has a bit of sharp nasality occasionally that kind of spoils his tone. He also could slightly improve his agility. His straining high notes at the end were not… great. On the positive side, he has a really nice natural vocal color when he’s not straining, and he has excellent pitch and breath control, allowing him to hold -- and control -- long powerful notes, as long as he doesn’t push the high pitch too hard. I wish he’d sing more in his lower register, because that’s what I think sounds best.

I really like Inseong’s voice. It doesn’t quite give me the tingles like Jay’s voice, or Neon’s, or Euibin’s, but it’s so nice. It’s just so rich and nice to listen to. He varies his dynamics, singing softly and cleanly sometimes, and loud and powerfully other times. He uses just the right amount of vibrato for my taste. I just think he’s a great singer.

Their harmonies sounded really pretty; you can hear both of them, so they’re blending just right.

Ok, so let’s see what we see on the show.

The editors made sure to include Hyukjin’s not-too-great high notes. Sigh. They get an 87 from Wendy and a 65 from Jaehwan! Way harsh, Tai!

VCG says, “You should have made the best use of your weapons, but since you used it too often, it didn’t seem like a special move.” I assume he’s addressing Hyukjin, and I think I get what he means. Hyukjin kept the emotional level at 11 the whole time, and didn’t really vary up his dynamics. I think that’s kind of how the original version of the song goes, as well, but maybe they could have adapted it a little more.

Poor Inseong. He sang so beautifully. Even if that one high note of Hyukjin’s wasn’t great, poor Inseong got dragged down with him.

Next up is Minwook and Intae.

Lee Minwook is from a group called Newkidd. He was in the Soul group, V9, and you guys, that little performance has been living in my playlist ever since. He wore a bunch of vests, including that bright blue vest that sort of gave gym-class jersey vibes. I really like his voice, but I guess the other guys didn’t because he was tied for 33rd in the vocal check in. He ended up in Something Like That, where the judges praised him effusively and he was chosen as Top Tier.

Jang Intae is from the Allround group, V31, and is one of the mysteries of the show. I don’t even know his age. He actually came in last in the initial vote after the vocal check in, with only 5 votes. He was in the Every Moment group, along with Bain and Seunghun from CIX. Unfortunately, I haven’t exactly loved his singing on the show so far. In my opinion, his voice is quite nasal, and he lacks both agility and breath control. Solar disagrees with me, though; she voted for him as Top Tier (everyone else voted for Seunghun).

The song they’ve chosen is Universe by EXO. This may shock and amaze you, but I really like this song. What? ME? LIKE A SONG BY EXO? WHAT NEXT?

Anyway yeah, it’s a great song. Sure, the lyrics are basically the same as those of most k-ballads -- I lost you but I’ll look for you forever, blah blah -- but the chords are complicated and interesting and there’s a drive and power to it that make it feel authentic. Plus they look like this:

Was there ever a more delightful concept than just “they’re dressed for fall and holding steamy mugs”? Sigh.

Anyway, I’d be scared to sing this song because the original was sung by some of the best vocalists in the world, but I really like Minwook, so let’s see what he can do!

Full version

Mostly, very nice, and since my ears can’t help but compare them to D.O. and Chen and Baekhyun and Suho and Xiumin and Chanyeol, for me to say they did well is a big compliment. I do think they were both a bit nervous. This is still really nice, but their soft notes were shaky for both of them.

Intae did better than he did the other times I’ve heard him, and Minwook didn’t do quite as well as other times, so they ended up a balanced pair.

Intae, left, and Minwook, right.

Minwook starts off a bit shaky. His tone is very pretty, but he actually hits the wrong note at about the :27 mark in the Youtube version. If you haven’t listened to the song 1000 times like I have, you may not notice, but I noticed, and I feel like the judges might have noticed too. (I thought about it -- was that a purposeful change on his part? And all I can say is that if it was meant to be purposeful, it doesn’t SOUND it, so the effect is the same.) His belts on the chorus also seemed a little harsh and out of control. But his natural vocal color is really nice, and he has a nice way to him, where he’s not overacting or straining all the time.

Intae was still a bit nasal for my taste, but less so than other times I’ve heard him. He also uses more vibrato than I prefer, but not all the time. He has a lot of power to his belts and

Their harmonies sounded really great, even the ones I think they worked out on their own that weren’t in the original song. I think they were smart to drop the octave right after that one long note.

In the brief glimpse we see of them in the actual show, they look great. We only get a tiny bit of commentary, and it’s from Solar, who gave them their high score of 96. It’s not clear who Solar is addressing, but she tells someone -- maybe both of them -- “you have a great voice, and your manner and style of singing is also good. I think it was even better because you created it together.” Again, Solar is the same one who voted for Jang Intae in a previous round. She just really likes him for some reason. Seungkwan gave them their low score of 78, but we don’t hear from him.

We get the final score, and it’s 543 to 589 in favor of Minwook and Intae. If you do the math and subtract out the high and low scores, the average score of the other five judges was 83 for Minwook and Intae, and it was 78.2 for Hyukjin and Inseong.

Round ten! Ding Ding!

Next up is fan favorite and Boy’s Planet survivor, Lee Hwanhee of Up10tion, paired with soldier and Pixar character Jo Hwanji. Hwanji isn’t dressed as a soldier today; he and Hwanhee are both wearing leather jackets instead, and Hwanhee has decided to a 90s scene girl looking choker. They’re going up against Lim Sanghyun and Taewoo.

Team Hwan-hee-ji has decided to sing Four Seasons, originally by Taeyeon of SNSD. Here’s the Full version on Youtube.

My thoughts:

Ok, I’m not the biggest fan of jazzy singing, but this seems really nice. They seem to be enjoying what they're doing and it comes across kind of classy and cool.

I think Hwanhee uses a tiny bit too much vibrato for my taste here, and he gets a tiny bit shrieky, but it feels like a stylistic choice. Hwanji’s voice is so clean and lovely except for his kind of painful shrieky high note at about 2:57 in to the Youtube version. Neither of them are nasal and both have good breath control and sense of pitch. They also brought bounce and interest into it with their facial expressions and dynamics.

They did a thing where they sang one line back and forth to each other, and it kind of makes sense when you know the lyrics are “We longed for each other / We got sick of each other.” And their cute punchy harmony section right after that sounded great.

The MNET edit is downright cruel. It makes it seem like they did that “trade lines back and forth” the whole time, but that was just one little part. The on screen captions say things like “the two voices do not sound in harmony.” Who writes these captions? What are you talking about?

We find out that their high and low scores were 79 and 69 respectively. I don’t get what the judges are annoyed about. It just feels like they were tired and cranky here in tenth round, really. Because 79 high and 69 low feel punitive. Are you really saying that they were worse than Woong and Seokhwa? Yeah, Hwanji had that one bad note, but come on.

Wendy gave the high score of 79, but we don't get to hear from her. VCG, who gave the low score, says “I couldn’t hear the lyrics. ‘I’m good at this’, ‘this is how good I am,’ ‘This is how high I can go and I can sing a little jazzy,’” he says in a mocking tone. “I think it was a performance that only showed your skills.”

Genuine question: Were they not supposed to show their skills? What were they supposed to show? I’m confused. If they hadn’t shown their skills, you would have said “I wanted to see your skills.” What was bad about showing their skills? What is bad about showing that they’re good at this?

Also, I am far from fluent in Korean, but I could compare what they were singing to the lyrics I found online and I didn’t get lost along the way, so they were pronouncing it well enough for *me* to understand them.

Hwanhee and Hwanji take their bad scores with grace. Hwanhee has been on dozens of these shows by now and is just like, sure, whatever.

Next up is Lim Sanghyun and Taewoo. They both performed in the Beautiful group. I enjoyed Sanghyun’s soft, gruff tone, but couldn’t quite get behind Taewoo’s “YG” style with its sharp, nasal tone and swaggy affectations.

They’re singing Downpour, the song I.O.I. used as its sort of “goodbye” before it disbanded. The lyrics mark it as a fairly standard k-ballad about a breakup, comparing the sadness of a breakup to a temporary downpour, but it has a lovely melody. Fun fact: It was co-written by Woozi of Seventeen!

Full version without reactions

My thoughts:

I still am not really on board with Taewoo’s style of singing, though I think it would have a time and place. It’s not that he’s a bad singer; it’s just that I don’t much like the manner of his singing. He does this little sigh thing at the end of each line that is very YG feeling and not something I like, and he is unpleasantly pitchy on his falsetto and shrill when he employs his mixed register. Note to note his voice can sound really different, and some of the ways it can sound is nice, but he’s affected and stylistic when I think his natural color might be his nicest voice.

Also, why don’t people open their eyes? What is this singing with your eyes closed thing so many of them do? And I’m aware, they probably don’t have completely closed eyes, but if that’s how it looks on camera, then… they should be aware of how it looks, right?

Sanghyun is still more my style. His voice is just so soft and pretty in a smoky kind of way. He does kind of drop off at the end of lines sometimes, but not all the time, so I won’t hold it against him or anything. Sometimes his voice reminds me a little of Baekhyun’s, so that’s a compliment, right? I really don’t have a lot to say just because it’s such a nice voice -- not nasal at all, not pitchy, good breath control. None of the bad things, all the good things.

I do actually think their voices sound nice next to each other, but I wish Sanghyun had a different partner.

In the MNET edit, we see a few moments with the caption, “A stage with very different voices but good harmony.” They get a high of 100 and a low of 85, so it’s pretty clear that they’ve won.

We can’t see which judge gave them which score, but I assume that Solar may have given out the 100. We get to see her saying, “When different people come together like this, a truly unique team will emerge. That’s what I felt watching the performance.”

The final score is 641 to 515, which is just… ouch. That means that Hwanhee and Hwanji got the second lowest score of the whole round. It was just unnecessarily harsh for no raisin.

If you take out the highest and lowest scores and find the average of the remaining scores, the other five judges gave Team Hwan-hee-ji an average score of 73.4, and gave Sanghyun and Taewoo an average score of 91.2.

Well, I’m so glad we spent so much time watching Geonu and Soomin make up a handshake, and watching Inhyuk and Joohee smack talk, and had instant replays and reactions drag things out the whole time, and wasted time with people wondering what the score would be just seconds before the score is actually shown, etc.

Imagine if we’d used that time to watch the SINGING on a SINGING SHOW that would have been TOO MUCH SINGING FOR A SINGING SHOW PLEASE I only want to watch people MAKE UP HANDSHAKES AND SMACK TALK ON MY SINGING SHOW The word “SING” stands for “SMACKTALKING IS NOW GOOD” and “MUSIC” stands for “MAKING UP SHAKES IS CRUCIAL” I guess

Why do I watch these MNET shows?

Oh yeah, that’s why.

Ok, I’m going to cut it off here for now, and my next post will be an Elimination Special! See you then!

XOXO

BRP Unnie/Noona

#mnet build up #bpr recaps build up #build up mnet #build up #up10tion #lee hwanhee #knk #newkidd #Inseong #Jeong Inseong

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