Kim Jong-kook

The first voice the boy discovered in his senior year of high school offered to the world. It was the debut song that introduced both the name Turbo and Kim Jong-kook's sweet, high voice.

• Over a fast-tempo electronic dance beat, Kim Jung-nam's rap and Kim Jong-kook's singing take turns. The duo's division of labor — dance and rap on one side, singing on the other — is laid bare in the structure of the song.
• The youthful Kim Jong-kook's voice is a clear upper register that rises lightly into the female range. Heard beside the deeper, lower voice of his later solo years, it shows how much the same singer's voice would change.
• Its sound, built from keyboard tones and drum machine, rings out as the archetype of Korean dance music in the mid-1990s. It is placed right after 「Turbo's Theme」, the short instrumental (intro) that opens the album.

The title track of the second album, which sold more than a million copies. Composed and arranged by Joo Young-hoon, it announced that Turbo had entered their prime.

• As the title says, it reworks the bouncing rhythm of the twist, the dance craze of the 1960s, into a 1990s dance beat. It is a retro dance number that dresses an old fad in new sound.
• The short repeated phrase (hook) that echoes the title in the chorus is locked to the dance moves. Thanks to that, it is remembered as a song the teenagers watching chart shows could easily follow along with.
• From late August 1996 it held first place on the music shows several times. Heard alongside 「Love is... (3+3=0)」 from the same album, it brings back the feel of Turbo's stages of that era, famous for their hand-gesture choreography.

The follow-up single from the third album, released as a fresh start after Kim Jung-nam left and Mikey came in. This winter song, composed by Yoon Il-sang, endured as Turbo's signature song.

• It lays a lonely minor-key melody over a fast dance beat. The body rides the rhythm while the mood sinks back into a lost love — a contrast that Korean dance music of the late 1990s loved to use, and one this song shows clearly.
• Kim Jong-kook's high, thin voice stretches out long in the chorus, lifting the song's melancholy. Mikey's rap stitches the spaces in between.
• Because it is a story song set against winter and snow, it was brought back every winter in the years that followed. Even articles introducing the 2015 reunion album referred to it as the benchmark of Turbo's sensibility.

A song from the second album, on which he set aside his high notes and changed his singing to the lower and middle range. It overcame the disappointment of his first solo album and set Kim Jong-kook the singer back on his feet.

• In place of the light, high sweetness of the Turbo days, the verse begins in a low, composed range. You can hear directly the result of the change in singing style he called the hardest thing he had done.
• The range climbs as the song goes on, and it sounds as if it were built to unleash the high notes held in reserve in the final chorus.
• Though it was not the title track, it went on to win such love that it even gave rise to the phrase 「One Man」 syndrome. Its voice — the confession of a man quietly standing by one person — cemented his image as a balladeer from then on.

The second single from the third album, 「This Is Me」. The song's popularity pushed album sales back to first place and led to his sweep of the three networks' year-end ceremonies that year.

• Unlike the heavy ballad “A Man,” this is bright, breezy pop at a moderate pace (mid-tempo). Its way of voicing giddy feelings for a lover without hiding them sets the mood of the whole song.
• He sings lightly in a relaxed low-to-mid register, then lifts the melody in the chorus and opens it up brightly. High notes delivered without strain give the song its freshness.
• In 2005, as physical albums were shrinking under the pressure of digital downloads, it was counted among the songs heard most often in karaoke rooms and on the streets. The fan base widened by “X-Man” helped hold up its popularity.

The promoted single from his 5th album, “Here I Am,” released five months after he finished his service as a social service agent. Its theme of a love that deepens by the day overlaps with his own time away.

• A ballad arrangement laid over piano and strings. The accompaniment is held back, as if to bring forward the voice that had returned after more than 2 years.
• The low-to-mid-register singing he had refined since 2004 has settled in, building emotion gradually. Its hallmark is a plain, unadorned delivery, without heavy vocal breaks or ornaments.
• Heard alongside “Thank You,” the album's other promoted single, it brings into sharper focus the feeling of this period's album, a thank-you offered to those who had waited.

The title track of Turbo's first studio album in 15 years, brought about by the “Totoga” reunion. Yoo Jae-suk featured on it, and it topped the streaming charts.

• An arrangement that deliberately revives Turbo's electronic dance sound of the 1990s. Laying old textures over clean 2015 production, it was aimed at the generation that remembers those days.
• Kim Jong-kook·Kim Jung-nam·Mikey lent their voices together to a single song for the first time. That the original and second-generation members came together in one place became the song's meaning.
• It drew attention as a case of Yoo Jae-suk taking part in another singer's song. The long bond between the two, running from “X-Man” to “Running Man,” left its mark in the album credits.