Park Ji Yoon - In My Fading Memory

The world is overflowing with ballads, some beautiful some annoying and some boring. For me to notice and remember a ballad it has to be gorgeous, first and foremost but there also has to be something that makes it stand out from the sea of ballads I already know and like. It took me some time before I actually found something like that in Korean pop but I think I have my representative Kpop ballad now.

I listened to a lot of ballads before I heard this, mind you. Most of the ballads I heard didn't have the melodies to keep me interested and were way too sharp on my ear - there was always something wrong with them. This one in particular though is absolutely beautiful in all the right ways.

I class a song 'heavy' if I feel like I might get a headache listening to it or if I actually get one and I class a song 'light' if when I have a headache, I listen to it and the headache doesn't get worse, gets better or disappears completely. This song is the lightest of light but it won't make you fall asleep if you don't want to. If you do though, that's a completely different story.

The vocals are sweet, the girl doesn't bang you in the head with them(like a lot of American ballad singers I know..) but you know she has a gorgeous voice - she doesn't need to scream for you to realize that. The smoothness of her vocals lend a lot to why I love the song, the verses are so flow-y and lullaby-like but when she hits the chorus it's like full speed ahead.

The song is simple in itself, there's not much going on with the instruments and the melody isn't very distorted and processed with a lot of vocal gymnastics but that's what makes such a big impact. The girl sings the melody and it's enough to make people like me listen - you don't need more than that, actually. May I also add that the middle-8 is so friggin' floaty that it literally makes you want to go lie down on a cloud at that very moment. I'm not kidding. At all.

You have to hear this is HQ so if anyone wants a copy of the song, tell me.

5/5

2 comments:

MelJune 2, 2009 at 1:07 AM
I think it might be YouTube's destruction of audio, but her voice verges on a little too piercing during the chorus -- but the sweeping background and how she keeps her voice relatively straight with no crazy riffs really intrigues me. It's the type of ballad that they USED to do, back before everything needed a bumping backbeat, even for a ballad. Great find!
NikkiJune 2, 2009 at 6:29 AM
It's YouTube, the MP3 doesn't sound like that. hahah.

I know - the minute I heard it I was like 'I have to write about this, it's too good for me not to'. haha. Good to know you like it!

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