Roy Kim Sings the Classics Again

In three lines.

• Roy Kim has released a remake album, 'Dasi Bulleo Bom - Bloom Again.'
• Six songs made the cut, including 'No More Encore' by Broccoli, you too?, 'Twenty Five, Twenty One' by Jaurim, and 'Song of the Wind' by Cho Yong-pil.
• Roy Kim barely touched the arrangements—just lowered the vocal temperature and sang them plainly.

Let's start with one song.

To sing it again means you've loved it a long time

'Dasi Bulleo Bom - Bloom Again' is a title you end up reading twice. In Korean, "dasi bulleo boda" (to sing it again) and "dasi bom" (spring comes around again) are folded into each other. There are six songs on it, and they span generations and genres. 'No More Encore' by Broccoli, you too? has been sung in the indie scene for years; Jaurim's 'Twenty Five, Twenty One' holds the exact temperature of that age; and Cho Yong-pil's 'Song of the Wind' is a name that's been carried across generations.

Even just skimming the list, you can roughly picture the songs Roy Kim grew up beside. A remake album is, in the end, a place to confess the songs you've long loved. The singer gathers tracks with very different textures—indie, band, ballad—in one room, but sings them all one way: relaxed, plain. So when you play the six in a row, songs of different origins end up loosely tied together by a single voice.

Not erasing the original—just opening a room beside it

Let's look at the numbers a little more. Six songs, and six different original owners, each their own. A remake can look easy, but it takes a lot of care. You're touching a song that's already finished inside people's memories. The more familiar the melody, the more a small slip shows. What to keep and what to change, and where you draw that line—that's almost the whole job.

Roy Kim didn't twist the arrangements much. The skeleton stayed, and only the temperature of the voice came down. Instead of filling the space with technique, the singer let the empty spaces stay empty. So for someone who knows the original, there's a thin layer of unfamiliarity resting over the familiar; for someone hearing it for the first time, an easy first impression. That the song stays unhurt whichever way you come to it—that seems to be the line this album set out to hold.

That's the last of the numbers. Now, the music. To sing something again means you've kept it close for a long time—pronouncing a song you loved one more time, in your own voice. Once you've heard all six, the days when you first met the originals might quietly follow you home. Some songs will make you miss the original; others will leave this version newly settled in your heart. A familiar song has arrived today wearing a slightly different face.