Song Trigger #2: "Hold My Hand" by Lee Hi

Frankly, I never expected to be listening heavily to K-pop, until one day when I was introduced to Lee Hi. Thirteen years later, things are... a little different, to say the least.

I’m fairly certain I’ve said this before, but I might as well repeat it here: while Mamamoo is the first Korean group I became a fan of, technically, chronologically, my first favorite is Lee Hi.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have listened to all this K-pop if I didn’t come across her. Or, yes, if the ex did not introduce me to her.

This was 2012. This is during what we’d now call the “talking phase”. I was already writing the old music blog and, perhaps foolishly, was trying to show off my apparently pedestrian music tastes. Lesson: don’t show off to a classically-trained pianist who listens to songs in languages other than English or Filipino. And also, thank them for introducing you to a wholly different world, one where your first impressions—that it’s all cutesy songs from boy bands and girl groups—is completely wrong.

I suppose she was shrewd enough to introduce me to someone who had a bit more… can we call it indie cred? Ha-yi’s quite different. She was runner-up in the first season of K-Pop Star—the winner was Park Ji-min, who would also have an interesting career path, although I don’t have the word count for that now—and debuted with the decidedly doowop-y “1, 2, 3, 4”.

I loved it at first listen. I decided to write about it, because why not? Somehow, I managed to follow her afterwards. Somehow, because I didn’t really do a good job at it. So, for this story, I’m jumping straight to “I’m Different”, her collaboration with Akdong Musician’s Lee Su-hyun, another early K-pop favorite.

It would be a couple of years before she returned, with 2016’s Seoulite. Produced by Epik High’s Tablo, it was a mature refinement of Ha-yi’s sound, with the right amount of hip-hop sprinkled in, of course. “Hold My Hand” was the first song released off that album, and it was both familiar and, oddly, daring at the same time: a song that feels really, really good, but has that ennui lurking underneath, something made evident by the way the song ends with what feels like the slightest flash of hope burning out.

Admittedly, only now did I realize that I was right. I didn’t really look at a lot of lyric translations; that came in later in my K-pop listening life. This song came on shuffle last week, and I decided to schedule a post on the Once Monthly’s Instagram about it, so I looked up the lyrics… and, yes, it’s a very sad affair from the get-go. It’s a post-break-up song.

Let me hold your hand again and again and again
I want you to come back
I want you to love me again

But again, you wouldn’t really know because the song just sounds so cheerful. Only last week did I learn that it’s because “Hold My Hand” is co-written by Shinae An Wheeler, a member of the Korean doo-wop group the Barberettes.

Now, that’s a group I haven’t thought about in a really long time, if only because it seems they haven’t released anything new since 2019. They weren’t really a big thing either, but they were known enough to appear on soundtracks and get a featuring credit in Baek A-yeon’s “Sweet Lies”. (She came in third on the same singing competition.) To be honest, the first thing that comes to mind are their Christmas albums—because, of course, the holidays, and Korean winters, and jazz. Specifically, that one song that I found amusing because… we used to call each other “hun”.

I’ve gone off-track, sorry.

Actually, no, I didn’t. My point was, the ex did know what she was doing, introducing me to the non-pop side of K-pop first. (Should I even be calling this K-pop at this point? As a very lazy blanket term, yes.) She liked the pop groups, but she also liked the indie acts, and Korean indie tends to be “for the coffee shop”—a little bit jazzy with the right amount of winter-into-spring lightness. So she also introduced me to J Rabbit (who I last wrote about on Playlist #25), and Rocoberry, and later, when I was attuned enough, I’d stumble upon Bolbbalgan4 and Cheeze and the jazz pianist Lee Jin-ah with her very sublime “Rum Pum Pum”.

But I was also opening up to the pop side. I will not repeat everything. Mamamoo, GFriend, Billlie—that’s my super summary.

As for Lee Hi, well, “Hold My Hand” wasn’t even the biggest hit off Seoulite. That would be the other single released with its first half—there were two parts to the album. The ethereal ballad “Breathe” was co-written by SHINee’s Jonghyun. Apparently that was unknown to YG bosses until the music video was shot, although Tablo himself requested that Jonghyun himself—someone from another of the “Big 3” companies—write a song for Ha-yi. Of course, that song would take extra significance when Jonghyun himself passed away a year after the album dropped.

As for me, I wrote all of that without any sentimentality. I could’ve stopped listening to Korean music altogether because the ex—who, I must reiterate, cheated on me—introduced it to me, but I didn’t. Somehow I had turned it into something I myself enjoy regardless of who planted the seed first. I mean, sure, I wrote about all that stuff up there—because it’s objectively factual. It’s what happened. Or at least it’s what I am certain happened.

It feels like stealing something you didn’t even initially want from someone. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.