Flight-Attendant Pop

[koganbot]

More wtf from Korea, Sunny Hill's "Darling Of All Hearts," which I described on Rolling Country as "sorta Irish folk-country flight-attendant pop" — though Mat points out on K-pop 2013 that "featuring" star Hareem plays the Swedish nyckelharpa (no doubt worth five times as much as the Irish pennywhistle he also plays*) and that the vocals in the "lalala" part sound very Swedish trad and the dance, too, looks Swedish. The LOEN Entertainment description improves our confusion by saying,

The song has a Bohemian polka-rhythm along with Jungle and Rock feelings with it as well.... the musician 'Hareem' joined as a session to make the music even more fun. The greek bouzouki, nyckelharpa, Drehleier, and the Irish Whistle is personally owned by Hareem himself. These instruments are rarely found in Korea, and in this song they make the polka even much more fun to listen to.

But actually, what makes the song for me isn't the whistle or the drone or the oom-pah but the breezy bright flight-attendant smile of the melody and the desperate cheer of the delivery, the lyrics by Kim Eana** about being the shoulder everyone else cries on while being denied a romance of one's own to cry about, and the video by Hwang Soo Ah turning the breeze and the desperation up yet another notch.

Watch on YouTube

I wish someone would analyze the melody for me. Seems like — I don't know — French musical comedy, or maybe it's Korean or something.

I can't think of any American act of the last fifty years that could pull off something like this, the happy smile that's got strength in it, but not big boisterous American strength, just a hard inner knowingness that doesn't negate the smile or slow the breeze. (Again, is there anyone out there who can describe this in terms of melodies and chords? It does seem countryish.)

*Dumb joke, false cognate, "nyckel" stands for "key," not "nickel."
**I don't actually know that they're her lyrics and not that of cowriter KZ, but Eana does tend to write lyrics.

Comments

[koganbot]

Btw, if you're not seeing Eng Subs when you hit play, I recommend you click CC and get them. The lyrics switch two-thirds of the way through from "I need love," to "Maybe I'm not all that lonely and maybe I prefer being single; actually, I like it." So as Mat says on K-pop 2013 it ends up like GLAM's "I Like That." The overall impression I get, then, is of someone not relishing the role of confidant, the one whom boys tell their romantic problems to rather than one who's the object of the romance; so she wants the option of being the love object so that ultimately she can turn it down and remain single (maybe a distant subtext being that she can get the romance and [unmentioned] sex without having to be in a couple).

But my reading is based on my associating Sunny Hill with Brown Eyed Girls and placing both acts (along with video maker Hwang Soo Ah and lyricist Kim Eana) on the sociocultural* liberal/left, which I do only on the basis of scraps of attitude and signifiers I pick up from the songs and vids. I think my impression is correct, but I'm not all that specific in my own mind of what's creating the impression. And also I'm being circular in using that assumption (that they're on the sociocultural left) to help me interpret the lyrics, and then using that interpretation to reinforce the idea that they're on the sociocultural left.

*A couple of years ago I stared using the word "sociocultural" as a sort of joke, "sociocultural class" as a parody of the falsely precise "socioeconomic class" (once you toss in the prefix "socio," you're basically waving your hands in all directions). But now the term has become something of a habit.

[davidfrazer.livejournal.com]

Sunny Hill's Bad Boy is said to be an attack on former president Lee Myung-bak. The lyrics criticise him for being too friendly to the United States and Japan -- "Cities I like are Washington and Tokyo". In South Korean politics, anti-Americanism and nationalism generally are left-wing positions, while right-wing politicians are strongly pro-American and not unfriendly towards Japan.

[koganbot]

That's really interesting. There's no way I'd have been able to interpret those lyrics on my own. Ditto "Let's Talk About," which Seoulbeats describes as a "scathing parody of the K-pop industry, particularly the treatment of girl groups." Whereas when I look at the translated lyrics to that one, I'm at sea. (No pop!gasa translation for that song, and I'm wondering if the translator at jpopasia really got them right.)

Typo

[koganbot]

"A couple of years ago I stared using the word "sociocultural" as a sort of joke"

"stared" should be "started"

So, a couple of years ago I started using the word "sociocultural" as a sort of joke...

Re: Typo

[koganbot]

"I'm not all that specific in my own mind of what's creating the impression"

Substitute "as to" for "of":

"I'm not all that specific in my own mind as to what's creating the impression"

[askbask.livejournal.com]

No doubt Loen director and Kim Eana husband Cho Young-cheol leans left/liberal - his twitter is political often enough and clearly enough to surmise that without him spelling out his party loyalties (often vague on the left here anyway.

Here the two of them are casting votes on election day, presumably for the losing candidate


Looking at who Hwang Soo Ah follows on twitter, since she's not very active there herself, basically confirms the same thing.

Some of the more political SH songs pointed out above were co-written by members, not that they are showing political colors in their everyday public lives.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that it's the narrator's girlfriends confiding in her: she enjoys being single, enjoys going out with her friends, but now they all have romances and only spend time with her when things are going badly with their guys. So she's complaining about her friendship being taken advantage of, and wavering back and forth in the way you do when you find your entire social circle moving on to the next "stage of life" before you do: I want one of my own / but I'm not ready yet! And the recognition that actually, the issue is you -- you're letting your friends cry on your shoulder because in the end, you enjoy spending time with them all the same; you don't have a serious boyfriend because deep down, you're probably still happy being single, and this is not actually causing you serious angst.

I'm not particularly fond of the tune, but the lyrics seems really realistic to me -- happened to me all my life.

[koganbot]

Yes, you've got a plausible scenario. Don't know why I jumped to the idea that it was guys who were using her as a shoulder-mat, though I wouldn't say I'd settled on it only being guys (nor does the song settle on the opposite).

I think of myself as historically both a doer and a done-to in such situations, but was definitely identifying with the "done-to" as the worse violation, so made it the boy as the doer.* Was no doubt also still influenced by this passage from Jonathan Bradley's great review of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me."

On this particular typical Tuesday, she's hanging out in her crush's bedroom while he argues on the phone with his girlfriend. It's so natural you could miss how perfectly revealing it is: who else but a high school boy would force his guest to hang around listening to his relationship's dirty laundry?

Of course the answer to Jonathan's question could be: college boys? men in their fifties?

*Not that the song is gender-specific about who's loving whom and who's confiding in whom.