OST Songs – Predictors of Degree of Sadness?

This week I’ve been playing two K-drama OST songs interchangeably, setting the mood for my writing and chilling. Baek Ji Young‘s Do Not Forget from the IRIS OST, and Park Hyo Shin‘s I Love You (yeah, not the most creative title ever, I know) from the upcoming Athena: Goddess of War OST.

As a random aside, I just realized that some of my absolute favorite K-drama OST songs appear to all come from the action thriller genre. In addition to the two songs above, there is also Jang Hye Jin‘s Hidden Sky from the Time Between Dog and Wolf (TBDAW) OST. [OMG, heart hurts, I miss Junki so much! Further tangent, TBDAW is the one drama I wished I watched live, because I swear my spazzing week to week would reach unprecedented levels of screeching, is how much I love this drama.]

I don’t make it a point to recommend music, because I have terribly pedestrian and limited tastes. This post isn’t about OST songs inasmuch as it’s about who sings which OST songs.

Anyone who watched IRIS shouldn’t have been surprised it ended that way, since Do Not Forget is ridiculously beautiful and SO. FREAKING. SAD. it pretty much has a neon flashing light that IRIS will not end well. The fact that it’s sung by one of the queens of sad drama songs is merely icing on the cake.

Baek Ji Young also contributed songs to the Hwang Jin Yi OST, the Road #1 OST, and the Jamyunggo OST. It’s pretty much guaranteed that if she sings it, the drama going to be a weepfest. In Jamyunggo the bodycount was so ridiculously high – in the last two episodes alone, I stopped counting and just sat back dumbfounded. In the end, it was easier to count who LIVED in that drama rather than who bit the dust.

I was counting my blessings the lovely songstress Baek Ji Young did not sing the main song in the Athena OST, when I realized the guy who does, Park Hyo Shin, is not much better. He contributed the main songs to Iljimae (still bitter here about the WTF ending SBS gave us) and I’m Sorry, I Love You (MiSa). When I realized he sang the song for MiSa, my lips started quivering with fear for my OTP in Athena already. Nooooooooooo.

Add to it the news that Baek Ji Young is going to sing the title song for Secret Garden (AHHHHHH, brain explode), I’ve resigned myself to listening to sad songs over and over again to get myself prepped for the inevitable hammer of doom to hit.

Okay, I’ll stop being so overly dramatic. I love both Baek Ji Young and Park Hyo Shin, and am pleased as a pickle they are doing the OST songs for Secret Garden and Athena. I just wished they didn’t leave such a trail of depressing dramas in their wake. To cheer myself up, let’s drool over some delicious OTPs and listen to some ass-kicking songs of longing.

MV for Hidden Sky (Time Between Dog and Wolf):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTydOZ7EY5o]

MV for Don’t Forget Me (IRIS):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhvSqF_c4fs]

MV for I love You (Athena):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRi0heyG180]

I can watch these three MVs over and over and over again and be happy probably forever. If anyone is curious about TBDAW, I wrote a review of it for Thundie. I didn’t watch IRIS because the only way I can stand a Kim Tae Hee vehicle is if Jung Woo Sung is her co-star, but I am content and happy to watch an MV about the OTP. Athena is still in the midst of filming.


Comments

OST Songs – Predictors of Degree of Sadness? — 20 Comments

  1. Its so good to see something on TBDW after a very long time. Its the best Korean Drama ever. The You Tube Vid brought back so many wonderful memories. Watching it, i am literally getting goosebump. Thank You so much for sharing. Can’t stop replaying it. TBDW is my all time favorite drama. I can watch it anytime and be mesmerized by Lee Jun Ki. Gosh! I miss him.

    I have checked out your post in Thundie’s few days back. So wonderfully written. Love it.

  2. i have same view when its come to KTH, i’ll never watch any thing with her in it,period. the only drama i watched( couldnd bother to finnish) was Lover in Harvad.

  3. i love all the singers you mentioned but i never made the connections between endings of dramas and the singers… so true… and very SCARY.
    please don’t make athena another drama with a freaking tragic ending… or SG for that matter.
    i watched TODAW real time and omo… it’s one, if not THE best drama of its genre… it’s so so so so so freaking gripping and well-paced. anyways, I was actually quite satisfied with the ending… it left me wanting more for the romance but after that showdown, i was just too relieved the ones who shouldn’t die didn’t die to care much about anything else.

  4. @emeldy, v

    Awww, group hugs for the TBDAW love! I debated long and hard to whether I wanted to give it a 10 (in terms of loving it) in my ratings above, but ended up awarding it a number no other drama got. So it’s extra special in my heart of hearts.

    I have a feeling Athena won’t be as good either. TBDAW really was cracktastically amazing for a thriller-love story-melodrama.

    • yes… group hug for TODAW! and omo… i didn’t see your rating list yet!! going to see the list!
      I also have a feeling Athena wouldn’t be as good as TODAW, just because it’s going to be a heck of a feast to top that one…
      But maybe it has to do with the fact that subconsciously or not, I have high expectations for Athena and almost had none going into TODAW.

      • feat, not feast… well, it’s going to be a delicious feast as well if it reaches TODAW level…

      • I guess I need to add another drama to my list. I was always planning on watching it but I’m waiting for a long break so I can marathon it. Isn’t TBDAW kind of like Story of A Man? SoAM is one of my favorite dramas EVER!

      • well… i guess todaw can be classified in the same genre as SoaM… but more flashy and a lot faster in pace. or maybe it’s not the pace that was fast but how much the main guy had to go through… SoaM had a more gravely quiet ominous vibe while Todaw/Tbdaw was more adrenaline inducing… park yong ha, the main character of SoaM also was more concerned with the “population and greater good” while lee junki was more driven by personal reasons.
        but same revenge stuff…
        anyways, yes, please watch it! or at least give it a chance!

  5. Oi, I still haven’t experienced the long drawn out sad drama. Just some epically painful movies. I’m terrified of running into these. Wish drama websites would sort by happy/sad ending.

    Now I’m afraid to watch SG…

  6. I am in the minority (it seems) of people who genuinely like Kim Tae Hee – she always plays tough smart women.

    This said, IRIS devastated me more than any drama ever before (I was a wreck for a week) so perhaps I would have been better off skipping.

    I really like TODAW, though perhaps not as much as everyone else (it’s not in my Top 10). It was a rare drama where the hero angst got so much I just started getting amused instead of sad – as soon as I’d think “my goodness, what else can the writers do to him now?” they’d come up with something even more hideous than whatever went on before. I still think their writing process went something like this:

    http://dangermousie.livejournal.com/918687.html

    • OH Mousie,

      You KEEEELLLLL me with your brilliance! Lovelovelove your mock scriptwriting session. I actually seriously deconstructed TBDAW and the writing is damn good, but it’s like the underlying intent was to screw with Jun Ki so bad he’ll need 10 years of intense therapy to get over the crap they kept throwing at him.

      Even up until the last 15!!!! minutes of the entire drama!!! Jun Ki was still finding out shit that would pull the rug out from under him. Mindfraking good, is all I have to say. And the OTP was one of my fave of all time, every Jun Ki incarnation in TBDAW had chemistry with Nam Sang Mi.

      As for KTH – I have to separate her characters from her peformance. I like her as an entertainer, she is smart, funny, beautiful, elegant, classy. I like half of the characters she played (the sucky ones are the psycho sister in StH, the useless white messenger in The Restless). But I absolutely cannot stand her acting – I personally think she is a terrible actress. She’s okay with normal scenes, but the second it calls for nuance or emotional depth she resorts to the wide-eyed gaze of weepy pain.

      But that’s neither here nor there, I find me and her just aren’t meant to be. 🙂

      Edit: TBDAW won major bonus points for me by (1) having the OTP have sex by the end of episode 4! which is like light years faster than ANY K-drama in the history of K-dramas, and (2) having it at some Thai hovel with the hero having just been beaten and tortured and almost drowned, but somehow he manages to find the strength to perform. (but since his object of affection was Nam Sang Mi, that wasn’t very hard to do).

      • everything ockoala said…
        nam sang mi and lee jun ki’s chemistry was off the chart… plus, junki was hotters than ever in todaw… made pi’s kurosagi look almost laughable.. (although perhaps I was slightly more taken by pretty junki in fly daddy fly).
        as for KTH… I really like her as a person… in all the interviews i’ve seen/read, I liked her more and more the more i learn about her… but yes, her acting whenever she’s angry/shocked/panicking/etc. consist of just wide-open eyes…

      • I was both awwwwing and amused at the sex scene – LJK must have been made of steel, to be able to perform in bed after being tortured for days 🙂

        OK, as a fellow TODAW addict, what do you think of the end – do you think they will meet again, and will they be able to work it out? I wish so, but have my doubts – after all, he walked out on her yet again at the end and that may have been one walk-out too many (yes, he had good reasons but not any he can explain as they involve her father).

        I am still shocked he wasn’t a corpsicle by the end!

    • TBDAW ending talk ahead – MAJOR SPOILERS FOR EVERYONE SO BEWARE:

      @ Mousie – they absolutely definitively without-a-doubt reunited in Paris. Just because it wasn’t shown doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The ending sequence was especially rife with soooooo many layers let’s go through them.

      Ji Woo still loves Soo Hyun – yes, without a doubt. She’s neither pining like a mooncalf after him, but she has not stopped loving him either. It’s like she KNOWS he’ll come back when he’s ready. And she’ll be waiting. The only time Soo Hyun walked out on her is when he left to go undercover in Thailand as Kay (he owes her BIG time for that one). Everything else was outside of his control. After her father’s death, and all the truths revealed, Soo Hyun simply could not return to normalcy yet. Which is why he chose to remain undercover for the foreseeable future.

      Soo Hyun is ready to reunite with Ji Woo – the Soo Hyun we see in Japan meeting with Min Ki is someone with a purpose (see his stride and swagger) but without all that baggage anymore.

      Fate will lead them back to each other in Paris – Min Ki knows this and that is why he had that grin at the end. Ji Woo is going there to study, Soo Hyun’s next mission is there. Fate has led them to each other so many times, they are clearly soulmates – Thailand, Korea, each time they are apart they find each other again.

      Ergo – my darling Soo Hyun and Ji Woo reunite by the banks of the Seine, and nothing more needs to be said. There is no more hatred, because her father has paid for his crimes, whether against the world or against Soo Hyun’s parents, and Soo Hyun has finally realized that it wasn’t all about pain. There was love – the friendship between their dads, the surrogate fatherhood that Soo Hyun as amnesiac Kay had with her father.

      Does my analysis seem like a logical progression of the story? I really don’t think I’m projecting fanfiction – with respect to TBDAW I think the writers left a very clear and clean trail to a happy ending, but chose to leave it sight unseen – like the Time Between Dog and Wolf, the blood red sunset where everything is murky and unclear.

      • Lol.. I didn’t think as deeply as you did about the matter but yes, I believe they will reunite as well. But that’s because I have a tendency to want to believe in happy endings whenever we’re left with the choice to choose.. kk

  7. lolz. i think i enjoyed this post waaaaaaaaaaaay too much. hands up to the amazing wit of the commenters here, and of course the laudable Ockoala!

    i learned a new word – corpsicle, courtesy of dangermousie, and found a new drama that I never realised I was missing out on (though that remains to be seen…. i’ve started trying to watch Conspiracy in the Courtyard since it was so highly recommended at Thundie’s, but lordy… it’s tiring. I can’t bring myself to get past the first ten minutes yet.) and no one had better be joking about the sex…. I’m gonna download episode 4 first just to be sure!

    and I have the dubious honour of being the only person to have NOT watched any Kim Tae Hee dramas. I didn’t avoid them, it just didn’t happen. However, I know I’ll be watching her new one with Song Seung Hoon, or at least 2 of the first episodes.

    btw… just watched Reign of Assassins. SO much better than I’d expected!

    • Little birds whispering in Carol’s ears…..watch CitC….watch CitC….

      You don’t want me to go all ranty about why it’s the best thing since….well….the invention of the saguek, eh?

      The first 10 minutes barely gets you to the discovery of the first dead guy, and you still haven’t met 1/2 of the characters.

      See the shiny watch dangling in front of you?…..
      ….watch CitC….watch CitC

      • lolz… well… I JUST got started on Time of Dog and Wolf and because I’m a total perve, I skipped through episode 4 merrily just to be sure there was really some sexing there. I’ve now restarted on episode 1!

        but Conspiracy ….. sigh. I’ve had it on my hard drive for a while now. ONLY FOR YOU MOMO! *wonders if I can get someone to watch it with me…..*

  8. “Add to it the news that Baek Ji Young is going to sing the title song for Secret Garden”
    NOOOO…Baek Ji Young is is absolutely gr8!!…but i will not forgive Kim Eun Ssook if my leads die!!

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