The water at my morning swimming pool is startlingly cold. It’s autumn. Perhaps it’s because I was born in autumn, but I’ve always had a fondness for melancholy songs. Not the crisp blue skies of early autumn, or the refreshing coolness that makes you reach for a long-sleeved shirt. I mean the heavier, lonelier autumn, when leaves cling desperately to the branches, unwilling to fall even as their colors fade. Songs that are, in my own words, melancholy. Melancholy can be described in many ways, but the expression I like best is “quiet sorrow.” Things we longed for but never had. Things we set out to achieve but never accomplished. Memories of loving someone who never loved us back. If we were to wail our hearts out over all that, we’d probably make a sorry spectacle of ourselves. So perhaps grieving quietly is simply how we manage to live as civilized people. Which means that being born in autumn is really just an excuse I’ve made up for liking melancholy songs. Melancholy songs are the ones that let grown men, who can no longer bring themselves to cry out loud, weep silently inside. The first song I want to talk about is “When I Go to Busan” by Eco Bridge and Choi Baek-ho.
Some songs begin with the very words of their titles. They announce their subject from the first line. And sometimes, the moment you hear those opening words, you know: Ah, I’m going to love this song.
When I go to Busan,
Will I get to see you again?
The moment I heard Choi Baek-ho’s low, murmuring voice, I found myself standing on a beach in Busan, where I was born and raised, listening to the song. I pictured her hair blowing softly in the sea breeze, and found myself completely immersed in the piano melody, rising and falling like waves.
To be fair, I hadn’t listened to much of Choi Baek-ho’s music before. I knew songs like “About Romance,” but mostly from hearing older colleagues belt them out at karaoke after a few drinks, their faces flushed. Yet his voice, set against Eco Bridge’s contemporary melody, was mesmerizing. I wondered whether anyone else could have drawn out quite the same emotion. It was an unlikely combination, rather like Oh My Girl’s Mimi insisting that cream bread tastes amazing with green onion kimchi. You wouldn’t believe it until you’d tried it—or, in this case, heard it. Choi Baek-ho’s sorrowful, wistful voice and Eco Bridge’s sweet yet melancholy piano made me think that if there were ever a film called Busan Nostalgia, this would have to be its theme song. Naturally, I fell for Choi Baek-ho and his voice from that moment on. As it turned out, he was born in Busan too. Knowing that made the song even more poignant. Perhaps, as he sang, he was thinking of someone he once loved in Busan.
I went on feeling a private sense of kinship with him. Then, a few months ago, I had an unexpected opportunity to meet Choi Baek-ho. I was working on an advertising campaign for a Busan-based brand and proposed featuring celebrities who were originally from the city. Half personal enthusiasm, half strategic calculation. The idea was to bring together a younger Busan-born celebrity for younger audiences, a star for middle-aged consumers, and Choi Baek-ho for the older generation. Fortunately, the client liked the proposal. But when we approached Choi Baek-ho about appearing in the campaign, he declined. I was disappointed. Then came word that he would reconsider if I explained the campaign’s concept and intentions to him in person. Through the talent agency, I learned that in the fifty years since his debut—this year happened to mark his fiftieth anniversary—he had never appeared in a commercial. He generally turned down advertising offers outright. Occasionally, if a proposal intrigued him, he would agree to hear it explained in person before making a decision. Even then, I was told, none had ever resulted in an actual appearance.
The day before our meeting, I carefully prepared my presentation, just as I would for a client. I had no idea how it would turn out. But I was determined to persuade him. I wanted Choi Baek-ho to appear in an advertisement I had created. Early the next morning, his agent, my colleagues, and I gathered at a hotel coffee shop. We were all nervous when he finally arrived. Unlike the commanding figure I’d seen onstage, the veteran singer greeted us with a dignified but gentle smile. He explained that although he’d never appeared in an advertisement before, reaching his fiftieth year as a performer had made him think it might be worth trying something new, provided the project was meaningful or presented a genuine challenge. That was why he wanted to hear our proposal himself. After about twenty minutes of explanation, brief but delivered with all the conviction and enthusiasm I could muster, he said he needed time to think and asked us to give him about a week.
The meeting ended, and our group left the hotel coffee shop, walking toward a nearby restaurant for a late meal. Then my phone rang. An unfamiliar number. I answered, wondering if it might be him. “Choi Baek-ho speaking. I’d like to do the advertisement you told me about.” Less than thirty minutes had passed since we’d said goodbye. I had no way of knowing what had changed his mind. I simply thanked him, overwhelmed with happiness. Then all of us cheered and shouted together on the side of the road.
Had we actually made the commercial with him, that would have been our happy ending. But the process of producing a television advertisement, even one lasting only fifteen or thirty seconds, can be far more complicated than it seems. The client’s direction changed, and the idea featuring Choi Baek-ho was dropped. The campaign went ahead in a different form. I felt terrible having to tell him that the appearance he’d so generously agreed to would no longer happen. But he understood. In fact, he was the one who comforted me. “Business isn’t easy, is it?”
Our encounter was brief, but in the time we spent talking, I sensed a fire still burning behind his gentle eyes. In his words about being open to something new and meaningful in his fiftieth year, I sensed the same spirit that keeps him making new music and collaborating with younger artists like Eco Bridge. And it was a song born of that spirit of collaboration and experimentation that had moved me so deeply.
Not long ago, I watched Train Dreams on Netflix. The film features a beautiful song of the same name. The moment I heard it, I thought of “When I Go to Busan.” I looked it up and discovered that the song was performed by Australian singer Nick Cave, with music composed by Bryce Dessner, a member of the rock band The National and a film composer. The pairing immediately reminded me of Choi Baek-ho and Lee Jong-myung of Eco Bridge. The way Nick Cave’s murmured vocals blend with the deeply lyrical melody felt remarkably similar to “When I Go to Busan.” Choi Baek-ho was born in 1950, Lee Jong-myung in 1978, Nick Cave in 1957, and Bryce Dessner in 1976. Here, too, artists from different generations had come together to create music steeped in melancholy, music capable of stirring something deep inside us. Nick Cave’s intensely expressive voice is often heard in films and television dramas. “Red Right Hand,” for example, is one of the signature theme songs of Peaky Blinders. His rough-edged voice helps create the atmosphere of that gangster drama. But I like Nick Cave best when he sings of loss, just as Choi Baek-ho does. There is something about the sense of loss conveyed by the endlessly repeated lyrics of “Train Dreams,” which Cave wrote himself.
Years and years and years and years and years and I can’t begin to tell you how that feels.
They say a singer is someone whose voice is an instrument. But there are voices in which you can hear an entire life. The moment we hear them, they take us back to a particular scene in our lives. Choi Baek-ho has a voice like that. So does Nick Cave. And when a beautiful song is carried by a voice like theirs, I become hopelessly melancholy, sobbing my heart out on the inside. While pretending to be perfectly fine on the outside, of course.
Eco Bridge with Choi Baek-ho — “When I Go to Busan”
Nick Cave — “Train Dreams”
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — “Red Right Hand”