On Singing a Sixteen-Year-Old August Issue Again

Singing the same song again is a way of admitting the time in between.

That the voice has changed, and that a reading impossible then is possible now — neither shows unless you sing it again.

What we know

Item	Detail
Artist	Yoon Jong-shin
Song	'Memory of the Beach'
Form	2026 Monthly Yoon Jong-shin, Repair August issue
Release	August 31
Music video	August 31, 6pm — 5 minutes 8 seconds
Original	July 28, 2010, Monthly Yoon Jong-shin August issue
Arrangement	Lee Geun-ho · Park Han-seo

Two became one

The original came out in 2010 in two versions, 'Day Ver.' and 'Night Ver.', running 4:51 and 4:52.

This repair is a single version at 5:08. What had been two became one, and the length grew a little.

Merging a song that had been split into day and night forces a choice — lean toward one side, or go somewhere that is neither. And a longer runtime means time was spent somewhere it had not been before.

Choosing a song that got little response

Yoon Jong-shin wrote in the video description: "I personally loved both the song and the words, but the response fell short of what I hoped, which was a shame. I had thought I would like to sing it again someday in a more matured voice, and while preparing this repair I moved the arrangement toward the piano."

When choosing what to repair, the usual pick is a song that did well. More people already know it, so a re-release reaches further.

Choosing a song that got little response is a different calculation. It means making it land now where it failed to land then. That requires something the first attempt lacked, and by his own account those things are a matured voice and a piano-centred arrangement.

A song where the place is a character

In the same note he wrote that "the beach as a space is, one might say, another protagonist of this song."

The narrator returns to a beach where memory lives, and he wanted to show that "the space is exactly as it was long ago, but the person who was there is no longer, so the absence of that person is felt all the more plainly."

The official note places the song in the 'space' line of his lyric writing, listing the street of 'On the Street', the regular haunt of 'Once in a While', the trip in 'Where We Went'. Places used as vessels for feeling.

A gap of sixteen years

The original was July 28, 2010; the repair is August 31, 2026. Sixteen years passed.

And the original was an August issue, as is this one. They sit in the same month.

"The happier it was, the more it hurts once it has passed" is the line that opens this August issue. For a project that takes a song made sixteen years ago and sings it now, there is an overlap in that sentence. Pulling something past back out is itself an instance of it.

Tonight, like this

Start with this version. How far forward the piano sits is the first thing to check.

Then find the original. Which of the two versions, day or night, this one is closer to is the second.

Last, listen with sixteen years in mind. The same person sings the same words and only the voice has changed.

Singing something again is a way of saying that what could not be done then can be done now. 'Memory of the Beach'.