Six Songs Roy Kim Sang Again

There's a moment when a song you know starts to sound unfamiliar, and I live for that moment. Roy Kim's remake album 'Dasi Bulleo Bom (다시 불러 봄)' is exactly that. You're sure you know the song, and yet it doesn't quite feel like the one you knew. That little gap keeps tugging at my ears.

In three lines.

• Roy Kim took six long-loved classics and sang them again in his own voice.
• He leaves the original emotion untouched and just widens the space in the arrangement, so each song breathes a little slower.
• The better you know the song, the more your ears catch from the second line on.

Let me cue one up for you first.

A Song Already Finished, Sung Again

A remake is a delicate thing. The original is already lodged firmly in people's hearts. Touch it too lightly and you hear "the original was better"; follow it note for note and there's no reason to sing it again. Finding your own place in that narrow gap seems to be the whole game.

Even the album title is a little sly. 'Dasi Bulleo Bom (다시 불러 봄)' can be read as "let me sing it again" and, at the same time, as "spring, come round again." The wish to dress an old song in a new season fits into that single line.

The approach Roy Kim chose is plainness. Broccoli, you too?'s 'Aengkol Yocheong Geumji (앵콜요청금지)', Jaurim's 'Seumuldaseot Seumulhana (스물다섯 스물하나)', Cho Yong-pil's 'Baram-ui Norae (바람의 노래)'. There's a band, there's indie, there's a classic that stands for a whole generation. Different genres, different eras — yet once they pass through his voice, they somehow braid into a single grain. He doesn't change the original emotion much; he only widens the empty space in the arrangement. Instead of painting over everything, he eases off and leaves plenty of room for the voice to pass through. So every single line of lyric catches in your ear more clearly.

Different, From the Second Line On

Just give it a listen, trust me. Don't skip it just because you know it. The first few seconds feel like a warm "oh, that song," and then, around the second line — huh? — your ears stop. It's the moment an unfamiliar breath settles over a familiar melody. And sometimes it quietly pulls along the season when you first heard the original.

The more you loved the original, the more fun this album will be. You get to set the song in your memory beside the one Roy Kim is singing now, side by side. Not to decide who did it better. Just to watch, quietly, what new room the same song opens as it passes through a different person. Listen that way for a while and you start to feel that a remake doesn't erase the original — it's closer to laying one thin sheet of paper over the top of it.

A discovery note. Play them back to back with the originals. Headphones if you can, on a quiet night. Chase the tiny differences — how the same song splits depending on who sings it — and the familiar tune turns, before you notice, into a new face. This kind of discovery is quietly addictive.