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.
Adding Machine 