Mili - Nine Point Eight // Reaction & Analysis

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to another Milli reaction. Today, we have 9.8 as requested by Spacesuit in the comments of the last video. And apparently, they said that this was supposed to kind of be maybe a prequel.

[00:00:11]Like there was a theory about it, but they don't believe so. And I don't believe that just based on the picture.

[00:00:18]I don't see the gay dragons anywhere.

[00:00:20]So, I'm not expecting it to be. But either way, I'm always listening to more Milli and being surprised. So, without further ado, let's go.

[00:00:37]>> [music] >> Sounds like the beginning of a You ready? a Broadway song. Never mind.

[00:00:44]Midwest [music] emo it is.

[00:00:55]>> [music] >> This might be the most like like funky thing >> [music] >> I've heard them do.

[00:01:06]>> [music] >> And with that guitar there.

[00:01:13]>> [music] >> That's such like a pop punk thing.

[00:01:19]>> [music] >> And with the halftime in there, too.

[00:01:29]Come on.

[00:01:32]>> [music] [music] >> Dude.

[00:01:43]This is a very unique sound for them.

[00:01:46]I say that I swear every single time.

[00:01:50]I just keep being introduced to different versions of Milli that I didn't know existed.

[00:01:58]It's like there's a multiverse of Milly out there and they all do different genres.

[00:02:03]The Millyverse.

[00:02:05]>> [laughter] [music] >> That was fun.

[00:02:16]>> [music] >> It's very shonen anime intro.

[00:02:32]>> [laughter] >> In probably the most Milly way possible, but still within that window.

[00:02:48]>> [music] >> That was a gnarly solo there.

[00:03:00]>> [music] [music] >> It's just such a weird sound for them.

[00:03:15]>> [music] [music] [singing] >> These little chugs.

[00:03:32]Oh, that's the end.

[00:03:34]Is it it's ended kind of soft, too, in a weird way.

[00:03:38]That that really does feel like shonen anime intro. Maybe outro. Those tend to be a little bit softer. But, you know the vibe I'm thinking of. So, this song is definitely utilizing one of the most famous pop punk progressions out there.

[00:03:51]It's D A B minor G And then of course you do have a little bit of an F sharp minor back to a resolve in the G at some points. That does happen during the song as well. So it's just like here we go.

[00:04:06]And why does this like work out the way it does? It's mostly because of the separation here. It starts on the root of D, that's the key we're in, lifts you pretty much all the way up adds a little bit of a lifted hook into something else that could go somewhere higher, but it doesn't. It grounds itself and it's just this is a super easy way to kind of finesse your way through a storyline in a song. It's it's bringing you through it here bringing you up, bringing you to that tension and then resolving it back down.

[00:04:39]And then if you need a little bit more of that emotional hang that's where you use something like the F sharp minor and then you resolve it back into the G because that's the way that music feels good when it resolves. And the reason that the song feels like it's telling you this story because it is musically.

[00:04:55]And that's how Milli tends to do. This is probably one of the more simplistic songs I've heard from Milli recently.

[00:05:02]They're usually very technically approached and they handle a lot of density in their piano parts as well, but this one is just mostly that pop punk kind of vibe, that power ballad feel to the song of just hey, I want to make a story, but I want it to sound uplifting in the way that that genre can really only manage. There there is a a definite emotional lift that pop punk has as a sound that guitars have with their distortion and that a good solid foundation in the drums can really bring you. You can do that with music in any genre really, but there is a certain energy that follows every genre and for this song I think that this genre was the best pick possible. Lyrically they do actually stick pretty consistent with their usual fare of having the lyrics to be a little bit dark. This one kind of seemed to talk about like loss and being able to process that and trying to process it, realizing that like they can't be with the person who's passed and coming to acceptance of that over time. And the the name of 9.8 being like I think it's the gravitational speed of Earth if I remember right from like [ __ ] middle school or high school, whenever I learned that. That feels right and it makes sense because cuz like they're still grounded, they're on Earth. And that would also make sense for that whole lift that we get here.

[00:06:21]Grounds you right back down. So like this it would be the lift of the person passing and this would be the acceptance. And then that would be the sadness in the F sharp minor. So like again, musically, emotionally, they're telling the same story here as the lyrics and Milly's always been very good at that between the lyricism and their writing. They've always kept a very consistent parallel between those factors that tends to not happen with a lot of groups and why I love Milly so much because they can do whatever genre they want to, they just make it work for what they're trying to get across in the story. So again, for this song being like this pop punky sound, it makes sense since that would be the the essence of like this this grit in their soul of like not being able to project that emotion in any other way. There would be some anger in there, but also this power that feels like it's driving forward that you just can't get through the same way if you're using a straight piano, right? You could get that energy through just a piano, like obviously you could, but it would require a rearrangement of the entire song. You'd have to take out all the guitars, obviously, all the drums, and that's what's kind of keeping this song feeling the way it is. If you remove those pieces of identity from this genre, it would be something else. So that's part of the identity of these songs that they make and why they seem to genre jump all the time and go for different sounds, because they're working with the story and not against it or trying to make things work together. They just let things go and let things flow. I think that's the best way to write songs. It's not holding yourself to one genre and one approach to music, but really letting yourselves be that flexible and having that much experience to be able to be comfortable in doing that. It's weird hearing Billie do this sort of genre, but it doesn't mean that they're doing it poorly. It's just writing for the sake of what makes the story shine most. However, for this one, I will say that there is a little bit of lack in the mix. I think that's just because I personally grew up with the pop punk sound, and I'm expecting more of those qualities in the mix. And even the Japanese standards, for example, are a lot more muddy than this. There was a lot of quiet mixing. All the guitars felt way too soft. The drums were just completely kicked into the back. I mean, it wasn't like unsalvageable by any means. It's obviously listenable, but there's just a quality to experiencing that sound that was kind of lost with this song, because Kasey's voice was really far forward, and that usually isn't the case for this genre.

[00:08:54]Everything kind of seems to clump together in the final mix, and that's kind of part of the over-compression of all of pop punk in general. So, I'm not saying that's a bad thing that it sounds this way, but it definitely doesn't like even though it is the genre, it doesn't hit the same way that most pop punk would or power ballad songs would, where this has this kind of crunch to it that everything gets pressed into the center.

[00:09:19]It's a little bit more traditionally mixed, which isn't, again, bad. Just if they had had somebody who really knew the genre and wanted to mix for that, they probably would have done it a little bit differently. I don't know who produced this one as far as like the final steps of the process goes. I never really do, but they tend to go through a few different people and I'm assuming whoever they did is probably a generalist mixer, which is usually great, but those mixers, if they're not super experienced in one genre, tend to miss a lot of what makes that sound sound that way and you end up losing a lot of that essence in there. So, while this is a really fun song and I love what they were doing for the story and again, just the keeping the progressions really solid because I do be loving a good progression that just loops. A good four-chord progression. I think that that one is a 1 5 6 4. It'd be a minor 6 is what that progression pattern would be.

[00:10:17]I'm pretty sure that's what it would fall in this key, but don't quote me on that either. Either way though, really nice. I love hearing their different sounds, but it always throws me off when there's something that's like this different and I'm like, man, where did they come up with that decision? Why did they go there? But then they do it well and even though they didn't like have the best of mixes, they did have the energy behind it. They had the point and the meaning behind that genre and utilizing that genre and for what it's worth, making it sound really good for how they write songs. So, another [ __ ] banger from Milly. Nobody is surprised and I suppose that's about all I got to say on this one. Thank you all so very much for watching. If you enjoyed this video and you want me to get to something else, by all means, drop in the comments below and I will do my best as always to get to those. Or if you don't want to do any of that, maybe you just want to follow me and support me for more stuff coming in the future, you know how to do all that and I'll see all of you in the next video.

[00:11:12]Goodbye.

[00:11:16]>> [music] >> The [ __ ] up.

[00:11:21]>> [music]