My Time is Jungkook’s newest and long-awaited solo. The track has a modern r&b vibe and showcases the sweetness, lightness, and soulfulness of his vocals. It also narrates, through the metaphor of time zones, his experience growing up as an idol and into one of the biggest stars.
While I will be focusing primarily on dissecting the vocals of this track, I think the production is also smooth but layered, with little sounds and adlibs that pop up throughout for extra ear candy.
I definitely give the producers props for expertly mixing Jungkook’s adlibs into the texture of the song. And don’t worry, I’ll talk a lot more about his adlibs as we get into the clips!
Also, if you haven’t already, I recommend looking at the translation. The song is extremely honest and heartfelt, and it has a narrative that Jungkook carries in his vocals. Credit to @STUDIO_0613!
I’d like to highlight a few specific things, as there is a lot to be said about this track. These include:
1) Jungkook’s lightness/mixing
2) vocal agility in both the adlibs and the rhythm of the verses
3) vibrato
I believe this song showcases his voice in these areas.
1) Jungkook’s lightness/mixing
2) vocal agility in both the adlibs and the rhythm of the verses
3) vibrato
I believe this song showcases his voice in these areas.
Let’s begin with the opening and first verse! Right from the opening, Jungkook is singing more in his chest voice, but he keeps it light. Even when he jumps up to higher notes, his voice does not get heavy and moves feel easy and weightless.
This opening verse also displays the incredibly fast and intricate melody of the song. He handles it easily, likely because of his experience rapping, and keeps the words neat and clean.
When I mentioned agility in terms of rhythm, this is what I mean. You’ll notice that the verses require him to bounce quickly from higher to lower notes, almost in a zigzag.
The opening line is high and fast all the way through, but starting with “My life” he begins that zigzag pattern. Listen again: “my LIFE has been a MOvie all the time.”
He does this zigzagging not only in pitch, like when MO is higher, but also by emphasizing and accepting different syllables. This gives the song a sort of bouncy and intricate rhythm, and it’s particularly impressive in the English lines.
He always handles his diction incredibly well, especially for switching between languages, and this song really shows that skill off. He’s able to move his voice so quickly but everything stays so neat and enunciated.
This accenting and the movement of his voice in the verses also gives them a staccato rhythm - each word or syllable has its own beginning and end, and they don’t really connect or flow together. This is a very r&b sound!
However, in the chorus, the song does become more flowy and had longer notes. This change in rhythm gives the song a dynamic progression and texture, which help to highlight the emotion.
Before moving on from the first verse, I also want to mention that Jungkook is singing up in his chest voice, in an area that would normally be someone’s “break”, where the voice tends to want to move into head voice.
For example, if I tried to belt this verse, I would definitely be on my break and have to switch to mixing. But Jungkook makes this placement sound so easy.
Actually, I’ve long wondered if Jungkook simply has a higher break than most singers, which is how he handles higher chest placements like this and in Euphoria so easily and with such lightness.
And he’s in this range for much of the song, but his vocals flow so easily, agile like elastic but also seamless like a stream. He’s really using excellent placement and support here.
Okay, let’s move on to the second part of the verse, which includes several rhythm changes. He transitions between these different flows so easily and this makes the song really dynamic.
Like I mentioned before, this part includes more of those zigzag moments where Jungkook moves up or emphasizes particular syllables. In the first few lines, he tends to emphasize the final word, like “Lotto.”
After that, he moves to a sort of swinging rhythm that starts higher and moves down in doubles. This is such a fun part to listen to, and he again handles the melody with ease. This shows how quickly he can move his voice!
This part also demonstrates the second major thing I want to point out: his use of vibrato in this song.
As I’ve said, the verses are pretty staccato and the words and notes are kept short. However, Jungkook often adds little bits of quick vibrato or trills into the beginning of lines, giving them extra texture and power.
The fact that he can implement vibrato on and off, and use it so quickly, really impressed me. These little trills also add ornaments to the verses and further emphasize its bouncy rhythm.
Take another listen to the lines after “lotto” to see what I mean:
These little bits of quick vibrato are often on the higher notes of the line as well. Again, his ability to go from no vibrato to these quick trills is really impressive and shows his mastery and control over his voice.
Now for the chorus, where the notes become longer. He’s still in that chest voice here, and the chorus has a lot of soul and strength.
There’s also a bit more breath here, likely from layering, and it gives the chorus this really emotional and passionate tone. It also shows his ability to integrate or remove breath as he wants, again displaying his vocal control.
The other amazing thing about the chorus and really all his parts on MOTS: 7 are his INCREDIBLE adlibs in the back. Do yourself a favor and listen again and focus on those adlibs and runs:
The first adlib of the course is another trill with vibrato. Then there are mixes of runs that move up and down on “I can’t” to emphasize the emotion of the song. Underneath, there are layers of breathy harmony to back up his chest voice.
I watched DJ Jino react to this song yesterday and he said that these adlibs and runs really show Jungkook’s growth as a vocal, and I agree. These are such intricate and interesting runs and they really come from his soul.
At the end of the chorus, we have the line “Finna find my time.” I don’t know if any of you have tried to sing along to this part, but it is an actual tongue twister. Both the rhythm of the line and the words are hard to match, and I’m a native speaker.
I point out the difficulty of this line because Jungkook handles it with finesse, repeating it cleanly, and this again shows off his diction and his agility.
At the end of the chorus, we have the repeated “oohs”, which are breathier and sort of make his voice part of the beat. I love the layering here and of course the adlibs over them.
In the next verse, we see more of the staccato rhythm and accenting, like on “YESterday, EVerybody, WAlking fast.” We also get more of that quick vibrato.
Again, he’s singing on his break, even going up in that sort of echo-y line, but keeps it so light. I think this shows off his ability to mix a bit of head voice in to make sure all the notes stay bright and sharp rather than heavy.
I’ll now skip to the bridge since the second chorus is pretty similar to the first. The bridge is really where the song starts moving to its peak, which is also where it gets really soulful.
Again, this part features more runs, expertly executes, and some of that quick vibrato on key syllables. This song is also interesting because Jungkook really doesn’t use as much breath as usual, just in the chorus really.
This gives the song a really strong vibe, not as soft and sweet as some of his other vocals. This displays his versatility and his ability to sing in this genre, which really fits his voice well.
There are some higher chest parts in the bridge, which stay light but also rise a bit to give into the passion of the song. Underneath his vocals, the song begins swelling towards the final chorus.
That final chorus is the peak of the song, where the lyrics change from “I can’t” to “I WILL.”
In the beginning of this chorus, he keeps that breathy vibrato at the end of “ya” each time. But then in the second half of the chorus, the “ya” becomes a full chest, stronger sound.
Again, this shows his ability to control his voice and use breath only when he wants to, which is not easy to learn! He really has amazing breath control and it’s apparent in this chorus.
This last chorus is also ornamented with a high breathy note at the beginning, sustained, and then those amazing runs and adlibs over the words, often in chest voice and with little trills.
And of course, it includes those breathier “oohs” to close out the chorus, leading perfectly into the outro that makes me replay this song as much as I can. There’s also a gorgeous ascending run that leads into this part as well.
These staccato, gentle, and breathy “ohs” are just gorgeous and again show his control and agility as a singer. What a perfect way to end such a soulful song. I love that this part includes different rhythms and pitches as well.
My favorite line is the one that starts a bit higher, but also love hearing him drift into his lower range here as well. To be honest, I can picture him just improvising and free styling these in the studio.
Wrapping up this long thread, My Time is an excellent track that really showcases Jungkook’s strengths as a vocalist and allows him the room to really let his adlibs fly.
This song displays his mastery and control in so many ways: in rhythm, with those zigzag patterns in pitch and accents, in agility with the neatness and power of his runs, with his ability to sing up in chest, and finally his ability to incorporate or remove breath.
It also shows his versatility and plainly how well his voice is suited for this type of genre. This song lets his silky smooth vocals come out and I am so thrilled.
He sounds at his best here in my opinion and I’m thankful that he told us his story in this way, with so much passion. ?? he gets better wi th every album and can only continue to grow.
جاري تحميل الاقتراحات...