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[Music and Dramas] What music teaches us


It’s Okay, It’s Love

By @sleepypie1212

Growing up, music didn’t seem like the food of love to me. It felt more like the food of life. If I didn’t have my headphones on, or the radio turned all the way up, or even just space to fill the vacuum with my own humming, then I felt like I wasn’t quite breathing. I needed music to filter the world through, to make sense of things that felt, at sixteen, pretty senseless. K-dramas, I’m starting to realize, utilize music in very similar ways.

K-dramas tell very specific kinds of stories that often explore the extremes of human emotions—the deepest loves and most painful betrayals, the hardest choices and the highest hopes. Sometimes, the very intensity of these tales seems foreign, as anyone who has watched the gloriously melodramatic Nice Guy or Secret can tell you. Music is our guide through these moments, giving us gut-reactions to things that sometimes even the most brilliant acting and writing and directing can only communicate cerebrally.


Gu Family Book

For instance, I’ve never personally experienced a level of hopelessness like Yoon Seo-hwa in Gu Family Book, preparing to be sexually sold to the man who destroyed her family—I hope not many have. But “My Eden,” with its ticking clock and oddly fey lyrics played over the montage, gave me the haunting feeling of a girl watching her future fade into the mist, while to trying to grapple with questions about fate and choice, sacrifice and selfishness. A complex emotion and viewpoint to evoke, but the music somehow communicates it perfectly.

Or consider It’s Okay, It’s Love and Family of the Year’s “Hero.” Was there ever a song that better stripped a hero down to his bones? Jang Jae-yeol was such a mystery to everyone, most of all to himself. And yet this song explained him in a way all the dialogue and flashbacks couldn’t manage, in a way I can’t describe, sitting here at my keyboard with all the time in the world.


It’s Okay It’s Love, “Hero”

I can keep going. There are lots of songs that give us deeper insights into complicated characters and situations throughout K-dramas—the emotional and moral revolution of Jang Tae-san in Two Weeks as expressed by “Turning”; the dreamlike psychological connection between the leads in Kill Me, Heal Me in “Auditory Hallucination”; the glorious, bouncy confusion of first love in Weightlifting’s Fairy Kim Bok-ju’s exuberant “From Now On”; Lookout’s rough-edged, street-lit “Got U” that evokes the whole atmosphere of the show.

But a well-utilized soundtrack can do more than give viewers insight into the intention of a story. It can link us to a broader, universal experience—feelings that there are almost no words for.


Six Flying Dragons, “Green Mountain Song”

The “Green Mountain Song” in Six Flying Dragons doesn’t just serve a purpose within its specific story. It’s a reminder for all of us somehow, a sad harkening back to the difficulties of times past with a melancholy glance at a present that doesn’t seemed to have learned. The instrumental “Lost Memories” in The Lonely Shining Goblin has a bittersweet vein of confusion threading through it, pressing not only our poor amnesiac characters to remember the people important to them, but us too. What have we forgotten? What did we value, and lose, and so became the poorer without ever realizing?

K-dramas use music to explore the deepest experiences of humanity. Love and hate, loss and discovery, the eternal stories that we’re constantly trying to capture and explain in words. The stories that in the end music seems to get to the heart of so effortlessly, giving us, at least for the length of a song, a measure of understanding for why we hurt, and love, and above all, why we live.


The Lonely Shining Goblin, “Lost Memories”

 
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The relationship between D.O character's and Jo In Sung always manage to get my heart[sorry to forget their name].
It's heartbreaking, poignant, personal and a redemption. Not to mention how similar the younger character looked, it's not the face but the expression, they convey the similar feeling from the young jae yeol - D.O - adult jae yeol.

OST in drama does convey many things that perhaps can't be said in the specific drama.
My personal favourite probably Ailee Tears That Stole The Hearts in Secret.
It tells the story of the drama in the 1st line
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I found a person, a person that I shouldn’t love.
I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shook him off several times

I made that person cry because of my severely bad obsession.
If the tears steal the heart and disappear.
It seemed like he’ll come to me

I believe that I love you, [the thought] shakes me up crazily.
I believe that I love you, my swaying love.
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The characters never really spout the line but the lyrics told how they exactly feel about each other, how the story is about two people that had loved someone and then feel the blossoming new love with someone they could never anticipate.

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i'm speechless after reading and re-listening to the linked songs... so true, what you said... the music transcends and enhances the scenes/situations of the dramas...

loved the examples you posted! some brought tears to my eyes...

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Oof, got a little misty eyed thinking about "Hero" + It's Okay, It's Love lol. Probably one of my favorite drama tie-ins. Thank you sharing, @sleepypie1212!

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Such a great post! It's Okay It's Love and it's perfect music was always like a punch in the gut.. so much emotion!

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I can just watch nice guy for their music choice blend with kim jin won cinematic touch for hours and hours and neer get bored. Also my beautiful bride and heartless city.

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Great post @sleepypie1212. This reminded me that I do not love the plot and story only of It's Okay It's Love, but also it's OSTs. Especially those english ones and Hero is one of those. Looking back I think it's this drama that utilizes english songs on most of it's OST. Now off to listen to them again. Hearing already the Ship and the Globe. Fave song of Jang Jae Yeol. 😇😍🎧

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I guess what I sent in doesn´t even compare to the level of writing, I really don´t know how to put my words like here.

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I feel the same way. @sleepypie1212, wonderful writing. Beautiful words to accompany beautiful song choices.

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Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelsss from is ok it's love
*SIGH thank you for the mention Hero really spoke words the script and no amount of dialogue could emphasise

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I appreciate this post so much. Music can make or break a viewer's experience and if I just add in the OST from Chicago Typewriter, the ones you've cited here are pretty much the recent dramas that really tugged at my heartstrings.

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I didn't watch 90% of the dramas you mentioned but with such a well-articulated post, I felt like I've gone through those dramas through the music you shared @sleepypie1212 Lovely piece! :) ♥

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It's Okay, That's Love is a masterpiece partly because of such a perfect soundtrack that fits awesomely with the plot and the characters ... I still get emotional while listening to "hero" because it takes me instantly to the drama and D.O. breathtaking performance 😍

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Damn. I swear, these posts are making me want to rewatch everything! I almost forgot how much I love that love story from Gu Family Book! Super heartbreaking!

And awww It's Okay, It's Love. I was very hesitant to watch that show before and thought Kyungsoo wouldn't be good in it but wow, his character is the one that had the most impact on me. Still remember crying my eyes out watching the feet washing scene.

Of course, Muiiya muiiya.

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I saw music and that picture of the "Hero" scene in That's Okay That's Love and I had to click! One of my favourite kdrama soundtrack <3 After watching it, I listened to Hero on repeat for months!

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Do Kyungsoo is such a natural talent and such a scene stealer! I still have chills remembering his scenes in Hello Monster(aka I Remember You).

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Ah, JIS and D.O. broke my heart in that drama. It hurt so good. The OST was really good for It's okay it's love. It's on my re-watch list!

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So heres the obligatory whats that song played in the cafe in its okay its love?

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I loved "My Eden" in Gu Family Book. It made the story of the parents so much more like a fairy tale, and beautiful and heartbreaking.

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