Lee Eun-mi

The signature song of the first solo album, recorded barefoot in Toronto. In the year the dance craze began, it made Lee’s name with a ballad.

• The sound of an early-1990s ballad recorded with real musicians in an overseas studio. Listen for the resonance of instruments played by human hands, not accompaniment stamped out by a machine.
• The voice does not burst out from the start; it begins low in the range, mixed with breath. Only on reaching the refrain (chorus) does it gather force, in what sounds like a restrained design.
• The feeling of looking back on a past love unfolds in a plain, unhurried voice, without exaggeration. That plainness became the basic character of Lee’s later ballads.
• Lee has sung this song in concert for more than 30 years, reshaping the arrangement along the way. Listen to the record and the live videos side by side to hear how the same song changes with the years.

The song from the second album that, after the first, secured Lee’s popular standing. It belongs to the years when the barefoot stage began.

• A classic ballad that carries a single emotion, longing, from beginning to end. The accompaniment stays in a supporting role, and the voice leads the feeling.
• The technique of letting a sustained note quiver evenly (vibrato) is used sparingly. Here the restrained side of Lee Eun-mi’s singing comes through.
• A song from the era when cassette tapes and radio requests made the hits. The voice seems to sit ahead of the accompaniment in the balance (mixing), so the lyrics come through clearly.

The first song made with Yoon Il-sang and placed on an album, at a time when Lee was ready to give up music. Three years later, carried by a drama, it became Lee’s biggest hit.

• A piano quietly opens the door, strings gradually gather layer upon layer, and the whole song traces a single long ascent.
• It confesses a love that cannot be revealed, as if murmured to oneself. One critic called the song the very byword for sad, unrequited love.
• The climax comes in the final chorus, where the note is pushed high and held long. It is also the passage where many who tried it at karaoke ran into trouble.
• A 2005 album track resurfaced after it was featured in the 2008 drama “The Last Scandal of My Life.” It shows an era when hits were made not by record sales but by dramas·music sites·karaoke rooms.

The title track of “Walking on Sound,” the mini-album produced by Yoon Il-sang for the 20th anniversary of Lee’s debut.

• True to its title, it seizes not the aftermath of a parting but the moment while it is still under way. The present-progressive voice lends the song its tension.
• A dramatic ballad design typical of Yoon Il-sang. The contrast is stark: held low through the stanza (verse), then released all at once in the chorus.
• In keeping with Lee’s fondness for the texture of analog recording, the instruments sound relatively warm and full. This is so even though it is a song from the late 2000s, the age of digital music.

A song used in the MBC drama “Dandelion Family.” It shows how, after “I Have a Lover,” Lee’s ballads continued to be paired with dramas.

• The title Nocturne (night piece) names a Western piano miniature that holds the mood of night. The song, too, opens in a hushed nighttime atmosphere centered on the piano.
• Many passages carry the feeling through breath and soft tones rather than by swelling the volume. That is where a singer’s skill with quiet sound, more than with loud, comes through.
• It is counted as an exemplar of Lee Eun-mi’s singing style, so hard to imitate that one contestant in an impersonation contest made it their signature number.

The title track of “Spero Spera,” an album named for the idea that while there is life, there is hope. It reached number one on the digital charts on its release day.

• Yoon Il-sang's first title was “My Heart Cries.” By his own account, rewriting the lyrics made the song a little brighter. It is worth listening with that trace in mind — the turn from sorrow toward hope.
• It layers personal matters such as aging and loneliness with a will to stand up again, in the manner of someone speaking to herself.
• In the chorus the rhythm seems to surge forward, calling to mind a heart pounding, just as the title says.

A cover of Lena Park's debut song, sung anew on the remake album “Amor Fati.” The album took its title from this song's lyrics.

• The original is Lena Park's 1998 debut. Compare the delicate R&B ornamentation of the original with Lee Eun-mi's thick, straight timbre, and you can hear how differently the same song can be interpreted.
• Since the album's theme was consolation, she seems to have shifted the mood toward embracing the heart of someone who has lost their way, rather than reproaching it.
• Unlike her two earlier remake albums, where she freely chose songs she loved, this album gathered its songs around a single theme: consolation. It sounds all the better heard within the flow of the whole album.