Red 66 times, pink and purple not once: the colors painted into 100 chart songs' lyrics

We went through the Bugs lyrics of the 100 songs on the Bugs weekly chart for the second week of October (the 5th to the 11th) and counted every word that names a color. Korean and English words for the same color, like '빨간', '붉은' and 'red', were counted together, and so were forms with something attached in front, like '새빨간' (bright red) or '새하얀' (pure white). Red came up most, 66 times across ten songs, but 54 of those came from a single song. Pink, purple and rainbow appeared nowhere in the 100 songs. Times follow the Bugs synced lyrics.

At a glance

Color	Songs	Times	Sung most in
Red (빨간·붉은·red)	10	66	CORTIS 'REDRED', 54
Green (초록·green)	5	18	CORTIS 'REDRED', 14
Blue (파란·blue)	3	14	NMIXX 'Blue Valentine', 12
푸른 (blue-green)	6	12	RESCENE 'Runaway', 4
White (하얀·흰·white)	5	8	ALLDAY PROJECT 'FAMOUS', 3
Gold (golden)	2	7	HUNTR/X 'Golden', 5
Black (검은·까만·black)	3	4	DAY6 'Congratulations', 2
Silver, yellow, gray	1 each	2, 1, 1	fromis_9, YENA, RESCENE
Pink, purple, rainbow	0	0	none

We counted '푸른' separately, because the Korean word '푸르다' covers both the blue of the sea and the green of a forest.

Red and green in one song

CORTIS 'REDRED'

The song tags '(that's red-red)' onto the ends of its lines, so the word red comes up 54 times. Of the 66 reds across the 100 songs, 54, roughly four in every five, belong to this one song. Yet the first color it sings is green. 'Seeing all kinds of green green' at 0:21 comes before the first 'red-red' at 0:39, and with '신호등 바뀌었어 green green' ("the traffic light changed, green green"), green comes up 14 times. It's a song that flips between a red light and a green one, like a traffic signal. Apple Music

In the other nine songs, red appears three times at most. Car, the garden's 'My whole world' brings in '붉어진 뺨' ("flushed red cheeks") on its second line at 0:06 (Official audio · Apple Music), and ROSÉ and Bruno Mars's 'APT.' has 'Red hearts, red hearts'. In fromis_9's 'Vitamin ME', the red is '새빨간 grapefruit' ("a bright red grapefruit").

Blue, and 푸른

NMIXX 'Blue Valentine'

The first line is 'You'll always be my blue valentine'. With '식어버린 너의 색은 blue' ("your color, gone cold, is blue") and '파랗게 멍이 든 my heart' ("my heart, bruised blue"), blue comes up 12 times. In between, '붉게 타오르다 한순간에 식어가' ("burning red, then cooling in an instant") and 'red blood' cut in, and later '붉고 푸른' ("red and blue") puts both colors in one line. The photo at the top of this page is from 2:10 in this music video, six members in matching sky-blue outfits. Apple Music

RESCENE 'Runaway'

The first line is '회색빛에 갇혀버린 Neverland' ("a Neverland trapped in gray"). It's the only line in the 100 songs where gray appears. From 0:48, the song that started out trapped in gray sings '푸른 빛을 따라 날' ("following the blue light") four times. No song sings '푸른' more. Apple Music

In LEE MU JIN's 'Coming Of Age Story', '푸르른 공기가' ("the blue-green air") comes up three times. In Roy Kim's 'If You Ask Me What Love Is', '숲이 푸르르지 않다고' ("that the forest isn't green") uses '푸른' for the green of a forest.

White and black

Hearts2Hearts 'STYLE'

At 1:53, the line right after '흰 도화지 위' ("on white drawing paper") is '쓱쓱 그린 Green'. The Korean '그린', which means "drew", runs straight into the English Green, so across two lines, green gets painted onto white paper. Apple Music

HANRORO '0+0'

The first line is '검은 눈동자의 사각지대를 찾으러 가자' ("let's go find the blind spot of dark eyes"). It's the only line in the 100 songs where black is used as an actual color. In DAY6's 'Congratulations', '날 까맣게 잊고' literally says "forgetting me black" but means forgetting completely (Music video · Apple Music), and the 'black out' in ALLDAY PROJECT's 'CRASH' is closer to losing consciousness than to a color. Apple Music

White comes up 8 times in five songs. '새하얀' (pure white) appears four times: '새하얀 눈꽃' ("pure-white snowflakes") in N.Flying's 'Flashback', '새하얀 빛' ("pure-white light") in JANNABI's 'For Lovers Who Hesitate' and '새하얀 모래' ("pure-white sand") in BOL4's 'Please Summer!'. The three in ALLDAY PROJECT's 'FAMOUS', the song with the most, are 'No white collar', an English expression for office work rather than the color white.

Gold, silver and yellow

HUNTR/X 'Golden'

'Gonna be, gonna be golden' comes up five times. The only songs with gold are this one and G-DRAGON's 'HOME SWEET HOME', with 'Golden days are still alive' (twice) (Official audio · Apple Music). Below is the official lyric video. Apple Music

Silver and yellow appear in one song each. 'On a silver platter now' (twice) in fromis_9's 'Vitamin ME' is an English idiom for being handed something without effort (Apple Music). YENA's 'Catch Catch' has '(Say) Yellow CARD !' once, at 1:36 (Music video · Apple Music). That's the warning card a football referee holds up.

Of the 18 greens, 14 are in 'REDRED', and two of the remaining four are 'green light'. Like 'I'll make the green light myself' ('내가 만들래 green light') in ILLIT's 'Magnetic' (Music video · Apple Music) and 'right now it feels like a Big green light' ('지금 느낌은 Big green light') in KickFlip's 'Kick Off The Wall' (Music video · Apple Music), it means a signal that says go ahead.

Pink and purple were nowhere in the 100 songs. Just as autumn came up only twice among the seasons in our October 20 list, there are words the songs on the chart rarely sing.