Our Ballad Season 2 - Episode 4

The title track of Leessang's 2004 special album Leessang Special Jungin, listed on the album as 'Love Is (With Jungin)'. A ballad sung entirely by guest vocalist Jungin, without Gil's or Gary's rap, her voice leads the whole song so completely that many mistake it for her own solo track. It unfolds, in an even, unhurried voice, the loneliness and lingering attachment left after love has passed.

• Jungin's sultry vocal, carrying the song alone from start to finish
• The weight of a slow hip-hop beat laid over a repeating piano·strings loop
• Chorus and harmony that thicken a little more each time the refrain returns

The sixth track on Noel's 2012 album Time For Love, a solo sung by member Jeon Woo-sung alone, which is why streaming sites list it as 'What If (Jeon Woo-sung Solo)'. Lyrics by JANU; music by JANU·Seo Seon-young·Jeon Woo-sung. It holds the aching heart of someone imagining, after a breakup, what can no longer be undone; after Kim Yeon-woo sang it on King of Mask Singer and Jung Seung-hwan·Kim Feel·Ailee and others covered it, it became a staple of audition and competition stages.

• A gentle piano introduction in E-flat major (E♭) and a first phrase that seems to hold its breath
• The high notes of a climax that soars past the bridge to the third-octave C (C5)
• The dynamic contrast of a final refrain that sinks softly again after the peak

Jeon Won-seok's signature ballad, recorded as the opening track of his first cassette album, released by Jigu Records in 1986. It is said to have been reissued on several later records and loved for years. The song renders the desperate wish to hold on to someone about to leave in the grammar of the classic '80s ballad, and episode 4 reintroduced it under the theme 'hidden gems of monster rookies.'

• A wide sense of space laid down by synthesizer pads and strings typical of '80s Korean pop
• A classic ballad emotional arc that starts low and bursts open in the chorus
• A dramatic flow across verses 1·2, linked by the interlude within just over 4 minutes

A track from Yoon Sang's third studio album CLICHÈ (a two-CD set), released in June 2000, and later included on Yoon Sang Best in 2001. The album is regarded as the work in which Yoon Sang drew deeply on the textures of electronic music and European-style world music. In 2008 Uhm Jung-hwa remade it for the tribute album YOONSANG SONGBOOK: Play With Him!. It is a lyrical ballad that quietly asks again what love means.

• Dense layers of sound built by Yoon Sang's signature intricate synthesizer programming
• The elegance of a melody that circles within a restrained range, never swelling
• An arrangement whose density builds slowly over one long breath

Written and composed by Yoo Jae-ha, who died in 1987, and given to Lee Moon-sae, the song appeared on Lee Moon-sae's third album (1985, which also includes 'I Still Don't Know'), the first on which Lee Young-hoon took part. Lee Moon-sae recalled that when he first heard it, 'it felt like experiencing a new world,' and has said that the song Yoo Jae-ha played for him was so good that he asked for it himself. It was the song that first let listeners hear, through Lee Moon-sae's voice, the compositional world of Yoo Jae-ha that changed the sensibility of the Korean ballad.

• Yoo Jae-ha's signature refined, classically influenced chord progressions and unexpected modulations
• A tidy melody well suited to Lee Moon-sae's plain, unadorned vocal style
• The warm texture of a mid-'80s acoustic arrangement supported by piano and strings

The song appeared on Lee So-ra's first solo album, released by Dongah Kihoek in September 1995. Kim Hyun-chul wrote both the words and the music, and the album was produced jointly by Kim Hyun-chul, Cho Kyu-chan and Ko Chan-yong. It topped KBS's Gayo Top 10 for 3 weeks running, establishing Lee So-ra, a former member of the group Strangers, as a solo singer. At the song's heart lies a paradox: despite its title, a loneliness glimmers beneath the voice that speaks of happiness.

• An accompaniment marked by Kim Hyun-chul's signature jazzy chord voicings and urban polish
• Lee So-ra's delicate control of dynamics, beginning in a low, whispering register
• A paradoxical afterglow born of a bright-sounding title colliding with a lonely melody