I was watching a BTS interview the other day when the guys mentioned Song So Hee would be covering one of their hit singles, “Spring Day.” I haven’t been interested in listening to other BTS covers, but have been lately when they show up in my feed. With little context about So Hee’s musical background and history, I started to play it. It didn’t sound anything like “Spring Day,” but I couldn’t figure out what this reminded me of. It was slightly stripped down without the pop-iness of the original. In So Hee’s arrangement, the song was entirely different, but still captured the beauty in the lyrics against what reminded me of traditional Vietnamese style music I grew up listening to in the house. After a quick Google search, I discovered that that’s essentially what Song So Hee is known for – traditional Korean music called gugak.
It’s hard to imagine our favorites as anything else than what we know. These moments of discovery are always so refreshing to me though.