Yesterday: With you – The Blue

Today: Daddy long legs – Tumbleweed

Yes.

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Chance!

Chance – Peppertones

A drama song. The closing theme to Cyrano Dating Agency, and in that context i’m pumping my fist every time i hear it. Removed, it’s still ok though lacking the pill of the drama to push it over. It’s a bit too… of that soulless, populist, well produced, well supported upper echelon of indie music. At least it’s upbeat. The drama? Well the drama’s great. A lot of fun. I’ll never convince anyone, but it is.

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I’ll Be There For You

I’ll be there for you – LED Apple

A drama song. It’s from Level 7 Civil Servant, which is not a very good drama at all. Some spy fantasy, it’s actually very dumb and would be aggravating if it weren’t so boring. But i started it so i have to finish it. It makes me wonder though: if i liked the drama more, would i like this song more? If it were linked to and then stirred moments from the drama, would the song then come to mean something to me and be lifted from what i think of it now? As now it sounds just above that Jet song where they decided to be in an other way terrible and approximate the Beatles as a cultured counterpart to their other terribleness. This song is not that bad. It just means nothing to me. I have probably liked worse songs from better dramas just because they were from better dramas.

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C’mon Through

C’mon through – Lasse Lindh

Worlds colliding. Finding this song on the soundtrack of the Korean drama Soulmate after hearing him through Labrador Records compilations, and then wondering, naively, how Soulmate‘s music co-ordinator could not only have heard this song, but also inserted it so wonderfully into a national prime time television show. The whole soundtrack is incredible, not only in sound but lineup: Elliot Smith, Nouvelle Vague, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Fiona Apple, Annie, Rene Aubry, Cocosuma, Club 8 (!), BMX Bandits (!!!), alongside a whole host of Korean artists.

It’s not enough just to have these songs, and Soulmate is a drama that uses its music so well. Half these songs wouldn’t stir anything in me if it were not for where i found them in this show, this one included. Again, the world doesn’t need to have its art distributed from a central (American) source. It can go straight from Sweden to Korea, straight from one heart to another. The universality of the songs here (the Korean ones included) speak to the universality and the tone of Soulmate. One of the best meditations on love, relationships, communication, need and want, and why we go through any of it, ever to appear on television.

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Black Moon

Black moon – Shin Min-ah

A drama song. We haven’t had one of those in a while. It’s in Arang and the Magistrate, one of my favourite dramas from last year. Hugely underrated, even appearing some nobodies’ worst of the year lists, it was a small ghost story set in Joseon times that, despite a restricted budget, created one of the most perfect, complete drama worlds and supernatural otherworlds i’ve yet seen. And one heck of a love story torn between those two worlds. Shin Min-ah starred in it and also, i found out today, sang this, which might be the best drama soundtrack song i’ve ever heard.

She is not primarily a singer and can’t belt out those typical soaring ballads, so what comes is this sweet, gentle whisper of a song that still carries in it all the longing, unrest and emotional surge of those bombastic, histrionic ones. It would be a better without the big production, the strings and the flute – everything that still traps it as an OST song – but as long as it is still reducible to her voice singing those three rising notes, there’s a magic here.

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Days 1 through 5 of my holiday

Friday, July 6th:
Scared – Verbal Assault

Saturday, July 7th:
Tool – Heavenly

Sunday, July 8th:
Daydreamer – Merel

(a live version because i couldn’t find mp3s for Superpowers)

Monday, July 9th:
JM y la furgoneta azul – Juniper Moon

Tuesday, July 10th:
Hey U – Venny

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The Mermaid Who Loved A Shark

The mermaid who loved a shark – Park Hee Kyung

I think that’s what it translates into. Corrections welcome. Drama song. This is from My Girl, another Hong sisters’ drama. My favourites. One of those wonderful, reliable things in life. It’s not a Korean version of our My Girl (though it seems like there should be one out there, with how it ends and all), but rather a version of Mansfield Park, with other nonsense thrown in. All dramas are probably Korean versions of something. I can only pick up on the references i know. There’s a castrato version of this on the soundtrack as well. This song is for the scenes of angst and unspoken desperation, and as such every MV of it on youtube makes it look like the show is the most mopey, melodramatic thing. Hong sisters.

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Because It’s You

Because it’s you – Tiffany

The SNSD Tiffany, not the mall-touring 80’s Tiffany. This is from the soundtrack to Love Rain, which ended with the wimpiest whimper this week. It was not the grand depiction of love and time’s malignant grip on love i was hoping for. It was not even overwroughtly or melodramatically so. It just ended, disappointingly. Thankfully. I couldn’t take much more of it.

Was it supposed to be 24 episodes but was cut down to 20? It started off so well. Those first four 1970’s episodes were exactly what i came to this show for. Then it jumped into the modern day and got a little goofy, but still maintained something of the show its reputation touted it to be. Then it went along. And went along. Things from the drama toolbox were introduced and weren’t fleshed out and made believable (“evil” love impediments), kept pointless and annoying (useless, jarring rocker character), or used as telegraphed plot convenience (the medical affliction).

And then it just ended. Happily. Contrivedly. Like they just gave up trying to pull something worthwhile from this mess, forgot about characters, jumped ahead in time, and gave the tritest of codas. Ugh. Don’t they write and prepare these things as a whole, knowing where they’re going, what touchstones they have to hit and when? The good parts of this were very good indeed. The rest was just boring and through the motions. Give me back my sappy, mopey 1970’s Daegu!

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With You

With you – The Blue

Another drama song worms its way into my head. It’s from the drama Feelings, which aired in 1994 and look at me i’ve crawled too far in to this. It’s not as dated as the words “Korean soap opera from the early 90’s” would make it seem. Actually, it’s a lot more compelling and better constructed than a lot of the modern dramas i’ve seen. I think this was one of the first to reach out to a youth audience, featuring a young cast dealing with young people’s problems.

Brothers in love with the same girl, she goes away to Europe and returns an educated, sophisticated young lady. It’s basically Sabrina in drama form, just in 1994 drama form so everyone’s haircuts and clothes are funny (or at their historical perfection). But it’s like going back to Degrassi or Beverly Hills 90210 – these things are universal, just dressed differently.

The soundtrack in one of the most 90’s things ever. Apart from the reoccurring proper OST songs like this one, it is entirely made up of English-speaking music, peppering cafe, modelling and rowing scenes. It’s a weird mix, but it’s completely 1994: Dee-lite, Tori Amos, Loudness, Maggotron Crushing Crew, Us3. Maybe earlier than 1994. However long it took for those songs to travel to Korea and appear on the soundtrack to a television show. It’s fun spotting them. But it’s not one of those songs in my head. It’s this. It’s a little less cool. This song is sung by two of the leads.

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Love Rain

Love rain – Jang Geun Suk

I love rain, i love… you. I think if there is to be an absolute portrayal of pure love it should be as clunky and imperfect as this song and the show it’s from. Love Rain is the latest drama from the Winter Solstice and Autumn In My Heart people, and my first foray into this hallyu melodrama world. I thought i had better watch it, because of the people involved, and i’m enjoying it a lot more than others (non-Korean people who write things on the internet) it seems. The drama landscape has changed since ten years ago when melodramas with seasonal themes ruled. The drama watching community has changed as well. It’s all romantic comedies, supernatural and action shows now, and Love Rain is suffering both in ratings and acclaim.

I really like it though. It’s beautifully shot (filmed in Daegu, not Seoul. That’s a nice change), everything and everyone is pretty, the lead male character isn’t an arrogant, inconsiderate, wrist-grabbing jerk (though of course the lead female character is still there at a level not far above ornamentation and a site of projection. Hopefully that will change), is at a refreshingly languid pace yet things still move and happen, exists in a world, both past and present, that is very real, and holds a truth to love and believes in it.

Yes, it’s cliched, yes it’s mopey, yes it’s cringe inducing, and yes it appears as though it’s been put together as this surefire hit – i can tell that even not being that well-versed in Korean drama history – but it’s really working for me. I like the 1970’s parts more than the modern ones. I should probably go and watch those earlier dramas. Yet everyone says they’re terrible. I just don’t know who to believe.

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