Our Ballad Season 2 - Episode 3
This was Kim Ji-yeon's debut single, released in January 1990 on her first album, As the Season Ends / When the Cold Wind Blows. Kim Sung-ho wrote both lyrics and music. It captures the feeling of recalling someone who left as the cold winds of late autumn arrive, and it is still counted among the seasonal ballads people return to every fall.
- The classic arc of an early-'90s ballad, opening almost in a murmur before the feeling swells in the chorus
- An arrangement with the texture of the analog-synthesizer era, keyboards and strings spread beneath like wind
- A melodic breath that seizes the first bar of the chorus on a high note and holds it long
Recorded by The Classic, the duo formed by Kim Kwang-jin and Park Yong-jun, for their 1994 debut album, the song was composed by Kim Kwang-jin. Beloved for its fairy-tale lyrics and clear tone, it reportedly sold 120,000 copies within about a month of release, according to press accounts at the time. Park Yong-jun's string arrangement is sometimes described as the origin of string writing in '90s ballads.
- A fairy-tale opening, strings layered one upon another over piano arpeggios
- A narrative structure whose scenes shift as if drifting between dream and reality
- Instrumentation that swells like a choir in the second half, and the release of the final high note
Yang Soo-kyung included this song on her 1990 album Where Is the End of Parting. Sources differ on whether the album counts as her second or third. The lyrics are credited to Ji-ye and the music to Yoo Young-sun. A song that calmly reflects on what one person can mean in a life, it reached a new, younger audience in 2026 when BTS's V and NewJeans' Hyein covered it.
- A first verse opened with quiet composure in Yang Soo-kyung's signature nasal-tinged lower register
- Restrained early-'90s semi-classical accompaniment, free of excess
- A repeating structure that gathers the feeling as the chorus returns again and again to the title
A track from Kim Dong-ryul's EP Reply, released January 11, 2018, featuring Lee So-ra. Kim Dong-ryul wrote the lyrics and music for every song on the record, and it marked the first time in 14 years that the two had sung together, since the 2004 album Toro. The song's strings were recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London.
- A duet in which Kim Dong-ryul's low voice and Lee So-ra's breath-like tone trade lines before folding together
- The broad, deep resonance of strings played by the London Symphony Orchestra
- Melodic tension and release depicting a relationship that misses even when one confesses their heart
A track from Noel's second album, released in May 2004. Kwon Tae-eun composed it, with lyrics by Bang Si-hyuk and Park Chae-won. Along with their debut single "Even Though I Held You," it became one of Noel's signature songs, and it is still often sung at weddings.
- Parts divided so the four members' voices take over one after another
- Harmonized chorus built up in the refrain
- A bridge that climbs toward the moment of the proposal, and a final key change
A track from Lee Juck's second solo album, 2 Juck, released in May 2003. The song is about belatedly grasping the meaning of a love let slip in careless younger days.
- A restrained first verse that opens in a subdued, reminiscent tone
- High notes that burst from the chorus like a belated realization pouring out
- A late arrangement in which band sound and strings swell together
Car, the Garden handled the lyrics·music·arrangement personally and released the song in January 2021 on the EP Absence. It began a chart comeback after being featured in late December 2025 on the TVING reality show EXchange 4, and in January 2026, five years after release, it reached No. 1 on the Melon TOP100.
- An intimate texture born of a spare arrangement built on guitar and keys
- Dynamics in which Car, the Garden's husky tone widens from a whisper into a cry
- A refrain that repeats, piling up word by word the feeling of one person becoming the whole world
A track from t 3 YOONMIRAE, the third studio album Yoon Mi-rae released under the name 'T' in February 2007. The song is known to have been composed by Brian Kim. As its title, urging us to send sadness away and welcome happiness, suggests, it is an R&B ballad of comfort and resolve, and it has since been sung again many times on competition shows.
- An R&B vocal line alive with Yoon Mi-rae's signature soulful vibrato and ad-libs
- A structure in which the English title phrase recurs as the hook of the refrain
- A harmonic progression whose mood shifts as dark verses give way to a bright refrain