ICY and Zimzalabim are - gasp! - the same song?

Click bait aside, there are some similarities between the form of ICY and Zimzalabim that are worth mentioning (probably not, but I'm just going to point them out anyway). Stay with me now, this is a little dry and a lot unimportant.

A lot of songs (not just K-Pop) use a fairly standard form. Usually something like:

Verse 1

Chorus

Verse 2

Chorus

Bridge

Chorus

Here's a #janky side-by-side breakdown of the major form points in both songs:

For my own purposes I broke down the verses of ZImzalbim into "A" and "B" sections. The pre-chorus of ICY and the "B" sections of Zimzalabim are essentially the same in terms of form, I just gave them different designations because ICY's pre-chorus is more of a "true" pre-chorus.

You can see that the songs are almost perfect form copies throughout - even down to the timestamps. Both songs even use abridged second verses before jumping into a rap break. Honestly, there's not much to read into here. No grand SM/JYP conspiracy to unravel. Throw in the fact that a lot of K-Pop songs are around 110-140 BPM, and it's not crazy that a coincidence like this would happen. It's just interesting in this case because both ICY and Zimzalabim aren't songs with traditional forms. Sometimes when groups try to switch up the formula they do it in the same way.

Blog Post Necessity Rating:

1/10