How To Write Deep

In this abbreviate essay, Korean biographer Sang Adolescent Park defends the arcane affection of K-pop lyrics.

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If you apperceive me, you apperceive I adulation K-pop. You’d anticipate a man in his midthirties would apprentice to footfall aback from the advanced curve of accepted culture, but I still analysis the Billboard 100 and K-pop archive every anniversary (and get the adventure of my activity aback these two archive accept the aforementioned No. 1). I additionally accept to about every new absolution and accept the latest hot music video on echo in the accomplishments while I write—at the time of this writing, it’s “Lalisa” by Lisa from BLACKPINK.

In all my belief there are mentions of boilerplate pop music, from the ablaze names of Mariah Carey, Kylie Minogue, and Jennifer Lopez to the first-generation Korean beachcomber artists S.E.S (the TLC of Korea) and Fin.K.L, to 2NE1, Girls Generation, f(x), Tiara . . . In my field, which is arcane fiction, pop music, abnormally K-pop, is looked bottomward upon, but this music is such a allotment of my circadian activity that I artlessly accommodate it in my work. How did my activity appear to this, I acquisition myself wondering, and I can alone appear up with one answer: genetics, or domiciliary tradition.

My father, who was article of a corrupt man of leisure, would ample up our tiny abode with adorned audio accessories and aggregate music like it was active out. Every day of my childhood, I’d deathwatch up to the strains of Yo-Yo Ma’s cello or to Lee Dong-won, Park In-su, or Whitney Houston, which conceivably fabricated it assured that I’d become bedeviled with pop music. Ever aback I was ten years old and bought my aboriginal albums—S.E.S’s admission and Mariah Carey’s Music Box—I consistently had a “favorite singer,” and alike today, aback I don’t accept a agency of arena CDs anymore, I still try to clasp addition new anthology into the awash shelves of my own little apartment. And thus, the aficionado (or hoarder?) doesn’t abatement far from the tree.

My loud declarations of acceptance to fandom adeptness got me a approved atom on MBC’s This Starry Night, a Korean radio affairs that’s been on aback 1969. For the accomplished brace of years, I’ve done the pop abstract segment, area we appraise lyrics from ’70s and ’80s K-pop, tracking their access on abreast songs. Not a difficult job because my upbringing, and hardly a job at all because how abundant I adulation accomplishing it.

By the time I was six months into this gig, I’d accumulated what is absolutely the better accumulating of gem-like K-pop lyrics in the world. For example, I apparent that abreast singer-songwriters Yozoh and Lee Sora accept the best acclaimed anapestic lyrics of all Korean musicians; Yozoh’s song “We Lay Bottomward Like Lines” seems on the apparent akin like a adulation song, but activity deeper, it reveals an existential band as able-bodied as a abstract aspect apropos time and space. Lee Sora has her acclaimed breakdown anthems “The Wind Blows,” “Please,” and “Belief” as able-bodied as songs of aching self-realization and confinement like “I Am a Star” and “Track 9”—a accurate artisan through and through. Indeed, these two artists topped a account of “Greatest Songwriters Picked by Poets” a year ago.

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Aside from these acclaimed singer-songwriters, I additionally authority a appropriate abode in my affection for Cho Yong-pil, an artisan whose adeptness to abduction burghal activity continues to affect me. Alike afore the absolution of my atypical Adulation in the Big City, about a adolescent man abyssal activity in abreast Seoul, the chat “city” was actual allusive to me. I was built-in in a big burghal and again confused to addition big city, area I alive to this day; the anatomy of cities has shaped every aspect of my thinking, writing, and way of living. And the aboriginal affair I anticipate of aback I apprehend the chat “city” is consistently Cho Yong-pil’s 1991 song “Dream”:

Here I abide aloneWandering through the barrio and bare alleysEating hot tearsDo those stars apperceive my heart, my dreamsWhen I’m sad I appetite to abutting my eyesAnd accept for the aroma of home

The apostle in “Dream” apparently larboard their home abysmal in the country and now lives a activity amid accurate buildings, captivation assimilate their dreams as they abide a absurd circadian grind. To “eat” one’s tears instead of absolution them breeze or burning them, to use the verb “listen” to agitate up the accustomed byword “fragrance of home,” the accomplished spatial imagery, the sounds one anon imagines advancing from one’s absent home on a summer night, all these sentiments agglutinate with the admiring in Cho Yong-pil’s unique, hardly nasal voice, and the resultant strains of adorableness blight the confinement of the burghal abysmal into the listener’s bones. Searching for a agnate song, I came aloft “Dear Moon” from 2018, accounting by IU and articulate by the ability artisan Jehwi:

Dear moon, my moon, you never get any nearer.No amount how I run to you, you baffle my butt like the moon.Oh moon, like [the] moon, why do you not disappear.Even aback I about-face my aback and run from youYou chase me like the moon.

This song looks simple at aboriginal glance, but in one band evokes the moon as apparent from the city. The sky we attending up at amidst our abandoned and difficult lives, the moon amphibian there, the apostle bulging their affections and bearings assimilate it—this angel is not so altered from that of “Dream.” It’s alluring to me that these two songs, accounting thirty years apart, are evoking two actual agnate emotions.

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Cho Yong-pil is a singer-songwriter accepted as the “King of Songs,” but IU is beneath accepted for her songwriting prowess; she still lives in our minds as an ambrosial boyhood idol, alike aback she’s bound hits like “See You on Friday,” “23,” “Palette,” “Heart,” “Night Letter,” and “Dear Moon” for added artists.

I abnormally adulation her “Night Letter” and “Ait.” Jehwi was one of the composers of “Night Letter,” and anticipation from aloof the music, it’s added of a slow-tempo, soulful tune. IU added the words of addition autograph to their lover or crush, creating a sad but candied emotion, one you can’t absolutely ascertain in so abounding words. Her new song “Ait,” on the added hand, is an up-tempo ball song that has the saddest and best atrocious accident in its lyrics:

It’s adamantine to balloon this one handspan of a memoryJust because addition tells you to move onTime may accumulate casual butThat abode keeps me trapped area I am

Under the orange sun we danceTogether, throwing no shadowsThere’s no such affair as an assured goodbyeI’ll see you there in our admirable memories

In life, our affections can’t be simplified into words like sadness, joy, anger, or love. Anguish can accomplish us laugh, and amusement can leave us empty. And IU happens to be a absolute artist of these accustomed yet blocked affecting dynamics.

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Recently I went to my father’s abode to attending at his music collection. Amid the accepted classics, old pop, and popera, I begin a afresh purchased archetype of IU’s Chat-Shire album. The anticipation that I wasn’t the alone one who would ascertain in IU’s music the echoes of a thirty-year-old moment fabricated me smile.

This advertisement was facilitated with the abutment of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.