Battle of the B-Sides:: Lim Young Woong: Lovely Touch

 Hello, everyone! I'm excited for this one because it's a little bit of a departure from our regularly scheduled strictly K-Pop posts, and while I could have done Lee Chanwon given my newfound love for him, I don't need SCoups's picket to get uppity again even though he's currently not hanging on the wall. So, instead, we're going to go with Lim Young Woong, who is apparently going to do some country healing this summer with his dog. Good for him. 

Lim Young Woong debuted in 2016, and, after a few variety and survival shows, became the first trot singer to get a win on a music show since Kang Jin, and in 2020 was the second most streamed artist in South Korea. Not bad for Mr. Lim. Not bad at all. Also, he has made it into the Diamond Club on Melon for more than ten billion streams, joining a single idol group with seven members that debuted in 2013 as the only other member of that club. Again, that's not bad. Well done.

Lovely Touch comes off of his first album, IM HERO, released in 2022. Our list of lyricists and composers are the same for this song. We have Foresko (Yoona), Kim Hyunwoo (Taeyeon, SHINee, Sungmin, Jung Seunghwan, KARA, 4L, DPNS, BerryGood, 14U, A.C.E, and GLU), Glody (A.C.E, Yang Dail, Punch, Blitzers, ADYA, Jeong Sewoon, Elaine, KangHui, Vanner, Hyelin, Yerin, SKYE, Lunedi, AmbiO, Kim Kitae, and Yeorum), and Myung Sungwon (Blitzers).

Now, the question is did he ever perform this or do I have to spend all this time yapping?

The answer is, no. Not that I can see. If you do know of a performance, please let me know.

Full disclosure, I didn't listen to this song when I picked it. I did do a tiny bit of research on the album first, and I knew that the album had a wide range of genres going on within it and that not everything was going to be a ballad or trot. But I liked the title of this song. I just honestly wasn't expecting a country song from the fifties. 

It's got almost a melancholy doowop sound to the piano with its quarter note chords. I've been rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer lately, and there's an episode in the second season involving some ghosts from the fifties reliving out their tragic romance, so to speak, and their song is I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos. If you take a listen to it, these two songs have the same style of staccato piano chords. I don't know if this is the technical name, but I call those the doowop chords because they show up in songs that make me think of poodle skirts and ruffled socks and drive-in movie theaters and malt milkshakes with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry on top. As a side note, if anyone wants some bops or doowops, I'm your gal.

I'm going to move on before I start defrosting the fifties slang, which I've researched extensively because of my Fallout 3 fanfic.

So part of the instrumental is doowop and it's really well done. Like, I don't know how familiar most people in South Korea these days are with music from the American fifties (they certainly are still aware of the fashion if Back It Up by Jewelry is any indication and I was surprised at the level of Americana and rockabilly going on in that music video), but considering I was raised on this by my grandparents who were young adults during the fifties, there are certain sounds that perk up my ears and catch my attention like a hound catching a scent. This is really well done. Instantly recognizable.

The guitar use, however, is so fifties country that I temporarily forgot there were doowop chords. This guitar is Patsy Cline or Don Gibson or Bobby Helms; although, to be fair, especially with Bobby Helms, you do sometimes get a bit of a doowop sound to the country music from the fifties. But that's also the point I'm trying to make here.

If this wasn't in Korean, I would one hundred percent believe I was listening to an artist from the fifties that my grandparents listened to. An artist having this sound in 2022? What? 

I'm not all the way to my flabbers being gasted by this, but I am definitely flabbergasted. And the fact that I found multiple karaoke versions and a few covers of this is fabulously mindboggling. And I've been looking at the comments, and it looks like this song is loved. It's a very odd intersections of my worlds, and I kind of wish my grandfather was alive so I could show it to him.

And vocally? I am swooning over here. First of all, that's what we call a vibrato, and I know I've got a bit of a love affair with vibratos, but this one is so warm and comforting, and he's obviously got control over it because not every note that's held gets vibrato especially if those notes are closer to the beginning of the phrase. Lee Chanwon has some competition.

You're not going to get a lot of extra videos, but I am going to include this cover that was done on some Top Ten show, as performed by someone called Enoch.

This rearrangement has been made a little jazzier, but this man has a voice worthy of the song and the audience is cheering for him. I need Lim Young Woong to perform it, but I suppose this is a good second. This is a b-side, y'all, and not one that's been performed by the original artist, but how loved is it with the existence of this performance? And with the cheers?

I may need to go do some niche research after this.

And in case you wanted to sing it for karaoke, you can practice with this video. 

Have fun!

I'm going to need a few business days to recover from the emotions of discovering this song's existence as a piece of art. If you've got a song you want me to do, feel free to drop a comment or use The Form, if you'd like. 

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I'm going to have to listen to the rest of the album now. It's fine. Next up is a request from The Form, so thank you, whoever sent that to me! Enjoy!

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