V.O.S Drew a Million Views With Old Hits. 'Will I See You' Is the New One

On 6 October the YouTube channel dingo Music premiered a 21-minute set by V.O.S, the R&B trio that formed in 2004: 16 of their songs back to back in its Killing Voice series, from 'Look Into My Eyes and Say It' to 'Beautiful Life'. By the morning of 10 October in Korea it had 1,069,657 views. On 9 October, three days after the premiere, the trio released a new single through dingo, 'Will I See You', in Korean 마주치게 될까. A live video of it, posted on the same channel at 6 pm Korean time, had 28,409 views 13 hours later; the official audio, 1,492.

'Will I See You' lyrics: the season comes back, you do not

It starts with the weather and speaks to someone who is gone. When the cold wind blows, you come to mind for no reason, because it was your favourite season; the laughing and crying are still sharp, some days the loss does not feel real, and the singer ends up staring at old photos. The chorus asks whether we will run into each other again and goes back to one picture, the alley where the singer used to walk you home. The season has come round as it always does, your name is called again, and every chorus lands on the same three words, “우리 사랑했던 가을이잖아”: it is autumn, the season we loved in.

In the second verse the singer is getting by until news of you arrives, then paces for a long while and runs out without a plan. The bridge admits to trying to hate you and shouting your name in anger, and you are still not there. Then the title's question turns real: if we do meet, what is there to say, and will the tears that burst out let you slip away? The ending asks whether life without you can go on well, then calls the days of fretting precious: just the moments of having you, the days of loving hard, and, once more, the autumn we loved in.

Nine quiet seconds

The words and music are by Choi Hyun-joon, one of the three, with Son Isaac sharing the music and the arrangement. Our software heard an electric piano open the song and the first voice come in at 18 seconds, on the cold-wind line. From there it climbs: the second chorus is louder than the first, and the bridge, the admission of trying to hate you, is louder again, 0.72 on our scale. At 2:31 nearly everything drops away for 'if we meet', 0.31, and nine seconds later the full sound comes back for the loudest passage in the song, 0.77, which runs to 3:07 before a short, quiet close.

What the million views came for

The Killing Voice set is the trio's back catalogue sung live: 'Every Day', 'Cry', 'On Days I Miss You' and the rest, with Jinseong of MONDAY KIZ singing one duet and Baby-J of Jewelry featured on another song. The video's own description jokes that it took 20 years. Older songs can find a second audience years later, as P!nk's 2012 duet, back on 28 Spotify country charts, shows this autumn. The new single asks that kind of audience to take a new song in the old style.

Our bet

For it: an audience we can count, a million views in less than four days for these three voices, and a new ballad that sounds like the songs that audience came for, out in the very season it sings about. Against it: the million was for the hits; the new song's live video drew 28,409 views in its first 13 hours, under 3 percent of the set's total so far; and we found no music video, only the live performance and the audio.

Our call: the dingo Live video of 'Will I See You' passes 250,000 views on YouTube by 9 November, a month after release.