>>4050188>the guy who made the painting comparisonsNice to see the thread's still here.
I'm actually a choir teacher IRL, so I like to pretend I know something about music. Winter Wrap-Up may be my favorite MLP song to date, and it was what finally convinced me that the music in the show was a cut above your average cartoon. Like any musical number, it's very repetitive--songs without easily-identified, repeatable patterns are virtually nonexistent outside of modern/experimental music--and is more about its own artistry than advancing the story.
Compared to a "normal" musical number, WWU is heavy on unresolved 2nds (notes are referred to by distance from the root note, and 1(root)-3-5 chords are standard. Thus, a 1-2-5 chord which doesn't move the middle note to 3), which are discordant to western ears, but not aggressively so. This gives the song a incomplete, striving feeling, which I'm sure you'll see neatly mirrors the text about needing to see winter off. The instrumentation is pretty light, and the beats are mostly given by bass, piano, and synth, rather than unpitched percussion (I realize that's not helpful information, sorry), which gives the entire song a very warm, connected feeling. The song transitions through a range of volumes and instrumentations, but for the most part these aren't abrupt breaks. The effect is like running your hand across a book of carpet samples--there are distinct sections, but it all blends together.
I suspect you'll probably particularly enjoy the Find a Pet song when you get to it (early S2), since it's done in semi-recit style; in other words, it's primarily text-driven. But yes, WWU is definitely an excellent song.
