Kim Jong-seo

A track from Sinawe's second album, “Down and Up,” it is the recording that first made Kim Jong-seo's voice known to the public. The year of vocal training after his failed audition is distilled in these high notes.

• Shin Dae-chul's electric guitar builds the song's skeleton. The distortion (a heavy, warped guitar sound) and the fast guitar solo show 1980s heavy metal in its classic form.
• Kim Jong-seo's voice comes close to shouting (a thin, high sound flung out sharply). The high range, rare in Korea at the time, rings out clearly in this song.
• It captures an analog band sound, as if drums, bass and guitar were recorded together in a single room. You can feel the rough texture of sound from the days before digital editing.
• It is a track from an album counted among the landmarks of Korean heavy metal. It is the starting point that shows where the rock-ballad singing of his later solo career came from.

It is the first title track released under his own name by a vocalist who had drifted from band to band. He named it the song of his life, saying it was what made his name known.

• The song begins quietly and bursts open in the chorus. The heart of the song is the contrast between the voice held low in the verse and the way it soars all at once into the high register in the chorus.
• The singer pours out resentment and longing toward someone who does not respond, as if talking to himself. Heavy metal's high notes are put to work carrying the sorrow of a breakup ballad.
• Synthesizers with a piano-and-strings feel are paired with electric guitar, so it sounds like the archetype of an early 1990s rock-ballad arrangement.
• Reaching first place on music chart shows in 1992~1993, it created the image of a long-haired rock singer standing at the center of televised pop. It still often opens his concerts.

Following the success of his first album, this song from his second was another big hit and won him a main prize at that year's Golden Disc Awards. With this song named after a season, he kept his string of hits going.

• The song lays the loneliness after a parting over a winter landscape of cold rain. It unfolds as a monologue, the singer alone, turning over a love that has passed.
• In the intro and verses he uses a soft, breathy tone, then shifts in the chorus to high notes driven hard from the vocal cords. The moment the tone changes within the same singer is worth listening for.
• The guitar solo that follows the chorus is an arrangement befitting a former rock-band vocalist. It sounds like a passage that leaves traces of rock inside the ballad.
• A hit from the days when cassettes and CDs sold side by side, it has become a seasonal song that is sung again every winter on the radio and in karaoke rooms.

The title track of his fourth album, “Thermal Island,” it was a choice to lead with hard rock instead of a ballad. He recalled that, because it was rock, he had not expected much, but the response was good.

• A fast, heavy guitar riff (a short, repeated guitar phrase) drives the whole song. Unlike his earlier hits, the band sound stands up front from the very beginning.
• As the title suggests, its voice is critical, needling a world and people that are polished only on the surface. It is striking that a song looking at society rather than a love song became the title track.
• Many passages have the vocals sharply clipped to the strong beat, so it sounds like a rock number the body answers to.
• It is often cited as an attempt, in the mid-1990s, to break from his image as a rock-ballad singer and return to being a rock musician.

A song from his fifth album, “Fallen Angel Forever,” with lyrics by the lyricist Han Kyung-hye. Long sung at weddings, it became his most popular song.

• Unlike his other hits, it is a bright, lively song in a major key (a scale with a bright feel). It sings a happy confession that gladly accepts being bound by love.
• Instead of belting high notes, his singing centers on a light, clear lift. It is considered the song that best reveals the gentle side of his voice.
• The guitar and band create a light, bouncing rhythm that flows naturally into an easy-to-sing-along chorus.
• The lyricist Han Kyung-hye has said the song became a turning point in her life. It has become a steady seller, sung across generations in karaoke rooms and wedding halls.

The song comes from SEEDS, the sixth album, released under the name Kim Jong-seo Band. It emerged from a record on which he wrote every track apart from the instrumentals, and it has long been loved.

• As the title suggests, it is a song about endings and farewells, told in a voice that looks back on time gone by with quiet composure.
• Fittingly for a record released under a band's name, the arrangement lets guitar·bass·drums be heard in equal measure. It sounds less like backing for a solo singer than like the playing of a single unit.
• The song builds layer upon layer of sound toward the end, swelling the emotion as it goes. Whether he would sing the final high passage in the original key live was always a point of interest.
• It came out in 1998, as the financial crisis was shrinking the record market, yet it went on to be sung again for years afterward.

His first new song in about 7 years, released after he wrote close to 100 songs and nearly gave up. He wrote the lyrics and music and did the arrangement entirely himself.

• He has said he recreated a 1970s retro (old-era style) sound inspired by the Beatles. It is a warm band sound, different in grain from his high-pitched rock ballads.
• Told in a reflective voice that looks back on his own life, it is sung with a lighter touch than the songs of his youth.
• Instead of today's digitally smoothed sound, the arrangement brings out the texture of analog instruments.
• He himself has said he released the song after overcoming a sense of defeat that his prime had passed, so the feeling of the song and his actual life interlock.