“Bobbed Hair” Made Me Cut My Hair Short
I was just beginning to realize that there were things on TV besides children’s classics when I saw Cho Yong-pil passionately singing “Bobbed Hair” on a music chart show. I was only a kindergartener.
The impression he made on me was so powerful that I immediately wanted to become the muse of the song. I begged my mother to cut off the long hair that was every little girl’s dream, and even made sure to have a photo taken as proof. And so I became the world’s most precocious kindergartener, going around with a bob and singing “Bobbed Hair.”
Sometimes when I visit my mother, I look through old photo albums. There she is: a kindergartener who looks slightly awkward about a hairstyle she is not entirely happy with, but also somehow quite proud of herself. The photo makes me chuckle every time.
I learned to read and write Korean fairly early, and apparently I even wrote fan letters. According to my mother, I would write something beginning with “Dear Cho Yong-pil oppa”—using the Korean word girls use for an older brother or an older guy they’re close to—and beg her to send it for me. My parents must have found it ridiculous. Here was their little daughter calling a man practically their own age “oppa” and writing him fan letters.
After “Bobbed Hair,” I went around knowing almost every song by Cho Yong-pil “oppa” by heart. That was how my love of pop music began.
“The Unknown World” Led Me into Music
Cho Yong-pil was still my absolute favorite after I entered elementary school, but once school life began, I gradually had less time to watch TV.
Around then, something caught my eye: something I could carry around and listen to without a TV or a big radio. It was Samsung’s MyMy portable cassette player.
I think I begged for one as a birthday present for an entire year.
Around the time I finally got my mother to promise me one for my birthday, I came across a commercial I would never forget. It was an ad for the Aha cassette player made by GoldStar—Samsung’s rival, and the company now known as LG.
And the music in that commercial was Cho Yong-pil’s “The Unknown World.”
The ad used the transition from the climax of the electric guitar into the synthesizer as its highlight. I loved that part so much it gave me chills.
There was just one problem. I had already decided on the Samsung MyMy. To make matters worse, GoldStar’s Aha was square and red, and I didn’t particularly like the way it looked.
But “The Unknown World” changed my mind.
In the end, I gave up the MyMy I had wanted so badly and bought an Aha instead.
Somehow, I felt as though every song I listened to on the Aha would move me the way “The Unknown World” had. Once I got it, I began listening seriously to radio broadcasts. And in the end, “The Unknown World” led me, just as I was entering my teens, into an infinite world of music.
Cho Yong-pil’s seventh album, which includes “The Unknown World,” still holds the undisputed No. 1 spot among the albums of my life. Every track still sounds sophisticated enough to transcend four decades with ease, perfectly matched by the sound created by Cho Yong-pil’s band, The Great Birth.
At the time, The Great Birth included Song Hong-seop, Kim Kwang-min, and Yoo Jae-ha. You can also see Yoo Jae-ha—who wrote both the lyrics and music for “Because I Love You,” included on the seventh album—performing with the band.
I had been barely old enough for kindergarten when that “oppa” made me change my hairstyle. Once I was in elementary school, he even made me change my mind about the very first cassette player I had wanted so badly.
As a child, I started listening simply because I loved Cho Yong-pil “oppa.” But as the years passed, I began discovering all the musicians and sounds within his music.
Cho Yong-pil, the first idol of my life, expanded my musical tastes and made me the listener I am today—someone who knows how to enjoy music in all its breadth.