I notice that there’s a pattern over here in the United States of songs in foreign languages not getting enough credit for their lyrics. Though genres like vocaloid, which largely features songs in Japanese, do get a lot of love over here, I notice that a lot of people just ignore the lyrics and enjoy the sound of the songs. I even see comments saying things like “I have no idea what this means but I love this song” under music videos that were made with English subtitles, specifically with foreign listeners in mind. While I’m not here to judge or gatekeep anyone, I do think that listening to music that way is doing yourself a disservice. For instance, “Romeo and Cinderella” is a song about an innocent teenager who dangerously idealizes teen romance, but I feel like too many over here are very quick to write it off as “Ooo high-tempo pop song with fun synth,” and that makes me sad because the lyrics really are beautiful and could really speak to the song’s largely young audience if they just took the time to read them. Surprisingly, I feel like this pattern also extends to bigger bands, and not just BTS either. For instance, when “Despacito” blew up, many people over here seemingly had no idea what the song was about (which got very awkward very quickly when the suggestive song was played at children’s events and such). Understanding a song’s lyrics can be very important. We’ll be here all day if I keep ranting about this as a broad topic, so to get back to BTS, there’s a quote from their leader, Kim Namjoon, that I think a lot of people misinterpret. Translated, it reads: “Music transcends language. BTS communicates with our fans by staying true to ourselves and believing in music every day.” Many take this as an excuse to just… ignore the lyrics in all of their songs? Which, while I’m no mind-reader, I would argue is not what Namjoon meant. The lyrics, on top of clearly being written with a lot of hard work and careful thought, add so much to their songs and are translated into many, many languages for a reason. And if you’ll humor a stressed AP student on a Monday morning, I would be happy to lead you down a rabbit hole and look at the lyrics and music video of “Spring Day.” I get to be a huge literature nerd and practice my Korean. You get to better enjoy a piece of music. It’s a win-win. If you are not familiar with the song, let’s start by listening to it. I’ll paste a link to the music video right here: https://youtu.be/xEeFrLSkMm8 And the translated lyrics (from the music video’s subtitles) right here: I miss you Saying this makes me miss you even more I miss you Even though I’m looking at your photo Time is so cruel, I hate us Seeing each other for once is now so difficult. It’s all winter here, even in August. My heart is running on time, alone on the Snowpiercer. I want to go to the other side of the Earth holding your hand. I want to put an end to this Winter How much longing should we see snowing down Before the days of spring return, friend? Like the tiny dust, tiny dust floating in the air. Would I reach you a little faster If I were snow in the air? Snowflakes fall down And get away, little by little I miss you, I miss you I miss you, I miss you How long do I have to wait? How many sleepless nights do I have to spend? To see you, to meet you Passing by the edge of the cold winter Until the days of the Spring Until the days of the flower blossoms. Please stay, please stay there a little longer. Was it you who changed? Or was it me who changed? I hate this moment, this time flowing. We are changed, you know, Just like everyone you know. Of course I hate you. You left me. But I never stopped thinking about you, not even for a day. Honestly, I miss you, but I’ll erase you Because it hurts less than to blame you. I try to exhale you in pain, like smoke, like white smoke I say that I’ll erase you, but I can’t really let you go yet. Snowflakes fall down And get away, little by little I miss you, I miss you I miss you, I miss you How long do I have to wait? And how many sleepless nights do I have to spend? To see you, to meet you. You know it all. You’re my best friend. The morning will come again. No darkness--no season--can last forever. Maybe it’s cherry blossoms And this winter will be over I miss you, I miss you I miss you, I miss you Wait just a little bit. Just a few more nights. I’ll be there to see you. I’ll come for you. Passing by the edge of cold winter Until the days of the Spring Until the days of the flower blossoms Please stay, please stay there a little longer. *A note on this translation: it is mostly taken from the original music video, but I did make a few small tweaks to make the lyrics make more sense in English. Because Korean and English such vastly different languages, translations from Korean into English can sound rather strange. Sometimes sentence structure is awkward, for example, because English and Korean have different subject object verb rules--English goes subject, verb, object (“The cat chased the mouse”), while Korean goes subject, object, verb (“The cat the mouse chased”). So to remedy this, I made a few tiny edits to make the translated lyrics easier for an English speaker to understand. For instance, in the first verse, I changed the original translation of “Seeing each other for once is now so hard between us” to “Seeing each other for once is now so difficult.” I did my best to stay as true to the original Korean lyrics as possible, of course. You can also always read the original translation in the music video’s English subtitles if you don’t trust me. -3- Have you listened to it? Read the translation? Okay, let’s go. It really makes you feel things, doesn’t it? Well, even if it didn’t, it certainly struck a chord with a lot of fans--no pun intended. In fact, because the song has hardly ever left charts since its release in 2017, members of BTS have referred to it as “a zombie.” This was also my personal first BTS song, and for months, I couldn’t actually listen to it without crying. To this day, the song often gives me goosebumps--not because of the way it sounds (although it is good musically in my opinion, I don’t really have the ear or the sheet music to pick it apart from a music theory standpoint) but because of its lyrics. But why and how do these lyrics that Namjoon literally just sat down and wrote in the park one day evoke such emotion in listeners who are willing to listen to them? I can give you a long answer. Let’s begin with the first verse: “I miss you Saying this makes me miss you even more I miss you Even though I’m looking at your photo Time is so cruel, I hate us Seeing each other for once is now so difficult. It’s all Winter here, even in August. My heart is running on time, alone on the Snowpiercer. I want to go to the other side of the Earth holding your hand. I want to put an end to this Winter How much longing should we see snowing down Before the days of spring return, friend?” There is a lot to look at here. To begin, the first verse establishes the extended metaphor of a seemingly eternal winter (“It’s all Winter here, even in August”) to describe the feelings of longing, loneliness, and stagnance in the absence of someone that the speaker misses. Clearly, it is not literally “[always] Winter, even in August,” but it remains “Winter” in the speaker’s mind. This other person, later referred to as “my best friend,” is clearly very important and dear to the speaker--the fact that they have and look at this person’s photo is further evidence of this--but it is evident that the speaker and this person have drifted apart for one reason or another and that relations between them have faded and become tense, leaving the speaker to feel ambivalent about them. With the broader tone and mood things out of the way, here’s another thing about the first verse: if you are anything like I was the first time I heard this song, you might be thinking, “Clara, honey, darling, angel, what in the Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a Snowpiercer?” That is the first of a couple allusions in the song and music video. Snowpiercer is a movie made in Korea (with English translations available, if you want to check it out) where survivors of the world’s second ice age, a harsh, unlivably cold winter, live on a large train with the poorest in the back of the train, or “the tail,” where living conditions are very poor, and the wealthiest at the front of the train, or “the head,” where living conditions are much better. The story follows a class uprising by residents of the tail. At the film’s turning point, it is discovered that the amount of snow outside of the train is steadily decreasing, meaning that it will be possible to live outside of the train. It is very violent, so I can’t recommend it if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, but if you’re into very harsh critiques of capitalism that didn’t become massively popular in the West for the wrong reasons (speaking of the importance of lyrics, I’m looking at you, “Gangnam Style) and long fight scenes, you might want to give it a watch. So the next thing you might be thinking is “that’s neat and all, but what does that have to do with the rest of the song?” Well, there are a few things. The first is that it feeds into the Winter imagery seen throughout the song. Like the ice age in the film, the Winter that the speaker signs of will come to an end, even though it may seem eternal (hence the lines “It’s all Winter here, even in August”). Secondly, many fans (including Clara) speculate that this song and music video are not solely about missing a dear friend. There is another layer, especially in the music video, of rebelling against authority (especially government authority), particularly in the wake of the Sewol Ferry tragedy, an event in which 304 out of 476 passengers and crew, including 250 students, died in a shipwreck. Many criticize the actions of the ferry’s captain and most of the crew, as well as the ship’s operator and the administration of President Park Geun-hye as many of the deaths were very preventable. The events of the Sewol Ferry tragedy are very complex, and I don’t think I can do them justice in just one side note of one little blog post, but if you are interested in reading more about them, you can do so right here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol For now, though, all you need to know for the sake of this blog post is that the song has undertones of rebellion, the giant piles of clothing seen throughout the music video mimic the clothes collected as memorials to the people that perished in the Sewol Ferry Tragedy, and many fans suspect that the music video was made in part as a memorial to the victims of the Sewol Ferry Tragedy. Finally, the allusion to the movie Snowpiercer explains all of the train imagery throughout the music video. One last thing and then we can move on from the Snowpiercer, I promise. There is one scene in the music video where things are being thrown at one of the band’s leader, Kim Namjoon. The scene is weird and almost comical at a glance, but many speculate that this scene continues the allusion to Snowpiercer by mimicking the resistance that met the rebellion in Snowpiercer as well as the harsh resistance that meets many protests in real life, especially when it comes to government. There is one more thing going on in the music video before we can move on from the first verse, and that is this bit right here. This shot here is an allusion to the short, philosophical story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. The story follows a utopian city, Omelas, whose prosperity stems from the perpetual suffering of a single child. To be completely honest, I myself have not read the story (time is just hard to come by these days. Plus APLit requires a lot of reading on its own, so I don’t have as much energy to read for pleasure as I did when I was a starry-eyed rising junior), but it is not difficult to access at all. Some people, mentioned in the title, silently flee the city of Omelas. Those who walk away from Omelas represent those who willingly refuse to conform to or participate in societal norms that they find immoral. Very fitting with the song’s rebellious undertones. The narrator describes the place that these people leave to as “a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.” Neat, right? I know I’ll have to give it a read when I get the chance. Okay, okay, now we can move on from the first verse. I promise the rest of the song isn’t this complex. “Like the tiny dust, tiny dust floating in the air. Would I reach you a little faster If I were snow in the air?” See? I told you the pre-chorus wasn’t so bad. It’s only three lines long. It is very sad though (and potentially very dark, depending on how you choose to interpret it). The pre-chorus begins to comparing the snowflakes--and, by extension, the speaker’s lost friend--to “tiny dust floating in the air.” The pre-chorus is more than just a pretty depiction of the speaker’s longing, though. Continuing with the Sewol Ferry Tragedy interpretation, this line illustrates how these people will be forgotten and how the speaker does not want that. The last two lines could be interpreted as suicidal thoughts. Snow is a common symbol of death in most literature, after all. Returning to the Ferry Tragedy interpretation, it could be a depiction of survivor’s guilt among those that survived the tragedy and lived to mourn their friends. The music video at this point shows one of the members, Kim Seokjin, standing at the bottom of a staircase as he watches his friends climb up it. Many speculate that this mirrors the way that those who died in the Sewol Ferry Tragedy watch their friends grow up while they themselves remain frozen in time in death. “Snowflakes fall down And get away, little by little I miss you, I miss you I miss you, I miss you How long do I have to wait? How many sleepless nights do I have to spend? To see you, to meet you” Because this set of lines and the one directly after it appear multiple times, I’ll only analyze them once. Though the chorus is one of the simpler parts of the song, it still does its job well. Beyond just a depiction of the speaker’s longing, the imagery falling snowflakes drifting away from the speaker mirrors the way that the speaker and their friend have drifted apart. If you interpret these lines as being sung by a survivor of the Sewol Ferry Tragedy, it becomes darker (and explains the snow imagery, as snow is often a symbol of death). Longing, loneliness, and possibly survivor’s guilt plague this person, keeping them up at night. “Passing by the edge of the cold winter Until the days of the Spring Until the days of the flower blossoms. Please stay, please stay there a little longer.” Another theme of the lyrics of BTS’ “Spring Day” is the fact that, as much as something may hurt, the grief will eventually pass. BTS originated as a band meant to uplift the younger generation, and they’ve upheld this idea for a really long time. This intention can be seen in earlier songs of theirs like “NO,” a song about the dehumanizing nature of the education system and how difficult school can be for kids, as well as the Love Yourself/Speak Yourself era, an era of their music that encouraged self-love, among other things. Side note: this is part of why it kind of gives me the ick when people are hateful towards BTS or their fans. It’s fine to dislike their music, but I feel like people are so quick to bully kids and teens, especially young girls, for just enjoying things, which is not okay (and also kinda misogynistic). The post-chorus, in this same nature, shows the speaker acknowledging that, though their pain may feel eternal (hence the line “it’s all Winter here, even in August” in the first verse), the long, stagnant Winter in their heart will eventually pass, and they encourage others going through similar experiences, be it survivor’s guilt or a depressive episode or academic stress, to hold on, even though times are tough. “Was it you who changed? Or was it me who changed? I hate this moment, this time flowing. We are changed, you know, Just like everyone you know. Of course I hate you. You left me. But I never stopped thinking about you, not even for a day. Honestly, I miss you, but I’ll erase you Because it hurts less than to blame you.” The second verse is my personal favorite part of the song. Not necessarily because of its complexity but just because of the emotion it conveys. The sense of longing intertwined with resentment and a sort of dull heartbreak gives me the chills a lot of the time. I love the tone here. The words are largely self-explanatory, but, like the chorus, they serve their purpose well. As time passes, the speaker and their friend drift apart and change, leading the speaker to feel abandoned and resentful. Obviously, they do not hate their friend, but their feelings of abandonment and resentment are very real. This verse could also be interpreted reassuring young people that they’re allowed to have mixed feelings towards people. I personally also really like the last two lines. The speaker cannot bring themself to hate their lost friend, so they resign to “erase” or forget them--or at least try to. “I try to exhale you in pain, like smoke, like white smoke. I say that I’ll erase you, but I can’t really let you go yet.” The second pre-chorus really illustrates how trapped the speaker seems to feel. They want to let go of this person because that feels easier than resenting them, but they evidently cannot. The words “like smoke, like white smoke” could be taken as an implication of smoking cigarettes, but I personally prefer imagining it as those times when you can see your breath in the cold. That “smoke” is more white than cigarette smoke, and it fits better with the rest of the song’s cold, Winter imagery in my opinion. Of course, though, art is what you make it. Finally, the music video at this point shows one of the members, Park Jimin, standing by the ocean and holding a pair of shoes, which makes sense given the Sewol ferry tragedy interpretation. Clothes were collected as a memorial. “You know it all.
You’re my best friend. The morning will come again. No darkness--no season--can last forever.” In the bridge, the speaker seems to finally give up on trying to forget or resent their friend. Unable to let go of them, they return to remembering them much more fondly. Finally, the song reinforces the idea that no sadness, winter, or loneliness can last forever, cementing the song’s message of persistence in difficult times. “Maybe it’s cherry blossoms And this winter will be over I miss you, I miss you I miss you, I miss you Wait just a little bit. Just a few more nights. I’ll be there to see you. I’ll come for you.” The final chorus here, like other parts of the song, reassures listeners that whatever they are going through, like the winter the speaker is experiencing, will come to an end, perhaps sooner than they might think. It opens by mentioning cherry blossoms, a traditional flower of spring (as well as a symbol of youth and the fleeting nature of life). There is not a lot to pick apart here, but it does its job in comforting the listener. Spring Day, in my opinion, is a perfect example of a song in a foreign language that does not get enough credit in the states for its deep lyrics and compelling meaning. There’s just so much to love here, and it makes me sad that so many people either can’t see it or seem to simply refuse to. Regardless, I hope I’ve at least given you something to think about. On that note, I have to go take care of all the textbook readings that piled up in the time it took me to write and revise this. See you on the other side. For context, up until I was almost eleven years old, I went to a nice Catholic school (with a special needs program) in a relatively liberal suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. In October 2015, we moved to Jenkintown for my parents’ work. Catholic schools that have the budget for a special needs program are not easy to come by, so my brother went straight to public school, but my dad really wanted my sister and me to go to a Catholic school to further our religious education. The first school I went to after moving here was extremely small and conservative, so we transferred to another, different catholic school for my sixth grade year. That one wasn’t a great fit either, so by seventh grade, we’d kind of run out of catholic schools, and I transferred here in seventh grade, so this is my fourth school.
I still remember this one time when I was visiting the nice school in my hometown in eighth grade. I sat down with my friend (and her new friends), and while we were catching up, I shared that I went to a public school. This one girl looks at me with these big, excitable blue eyes, and she goes “Is it like in the movies?” I don’t think I’ll ever know how to respond to that. Remember the tiny, conservative school I went to in the fifth grade? It was a k-8 school with a grand total of 75 kids in its entire student body. The grades got smaller as you went up, so my grade had eleven students (none of whom were fond of young Clara), and the eighth grade had three. So, when June came around and it was time for the eighth graders to graduate, we had what I remember as the world’s saddest graduation ceremony. We didn’t actually have an auditorium, so it was in a church basement. They had these ““”posters””” up that were just the words “Congrats Grad” printed on to eight-and-a-half by eleven pieces of printer paper (and weren’t cropped quite right, so some just said “Congrat” or, my personal favorite, “rats Grad!”). So the three eighth graders walked on to the stage, and “Pomp and Circumstance” just played out for a good five minutes all while these three middle school-aged kids looked out at this crowd of tiny republicans with this look on their faces like they wanted to melt into the floor and just vanish. And I just think that story sums up my fifth grade year pretty well. When I was in sixth grade, the school I went to was better--and had more than 75 total kids, though it was still small, K-8 with maybe 35-50 kids per grade--but it was a bit low-budget, and, as such, didn’t have air conditioning. Which made the warmer months interesting, especially since we were a bunch of middle school-aged children. Kids’ arms would peel off their textbooks like sticky notes and the teacher would just give this pained, customer service smile and go “It’s kind of tropical outside today.” Kids would also just pass out, and no one cared. One time a kid passed out in mass and they just went on with the service. They made sure to take her to the nurse’s office and everything, but no one in the room even batted an eye. She didn’t even get to go home; we were talking to her about it later that day and literally no one cared. One time at that school, though, a kid passed out, and it was different for some reason. This kid needed to be taken to the hospital on a stretcher (he didn’t have a medical issue or anything, he just passed out from the heat like the others, but my best guess is that it was June and everyone was too tired to think very much), so they needed us to clear the hallways, so you know what they did? Naturally, they called a lockdown on the intercom without saying why. I remember crouching against the wall with this girl while we asked the teacher if it was a drill and the way the atmosphere in the room changed when she said she didn’t know. At one point she held up her heart monitor, and it read 150. Then the principal eventually came back on the intercom to call an end to the lockdown, and we just went on with our day. Most people were almost completely indifferent again, too. I don’t think they explained what happened until the announcements at the end of the school day. Another time, the school staff suspected kids of skipping class in the bathrooms, so they started using these sign-in and sign-out sheets. There was one in the classroom and one by the bathroom. After a few months of that practice, pens from the sign out sheet by the boys’ bathroom mysteriously started disappearing, and, after a few weeks, they found a ton of them shoved down one of the urinals. They launched this entire investigation, and it turned out it was one of the kids from my grade. He got suspended for like two months, but honestly, the resistance was respectable. Kid was dedicated (and apparently covered his tracks rather well). That same year, we had a lunch room that was separate from the main building, so we designated these two kids whose job it was to move the milk from the fridge in the main building to the cafeteria. One time, in English, these two kids--friends of the pen kid--came into our classroom insisting that they found expired chocolate milk from 1972 inside the basement wall. They kept this up until our poor teacher went to check. Of course there wasn’t 70’s milk in the wall, but, again, the dedication is impressive. Although that school did have a band, it was an after-school extracurricular, not a class, and, because I didn’t pick up the flute until the beginning of my sixth grade year, I was in beginner band at the time, with the fourth graders. Impressive that I’m in honors now, isn’t it? Anyway, chorus was a required class at that school, and we had this one project where we had to sing karaoke in groups, which is all well and good if a. you aren’t almost completely tone-deaf and b. you know literally any of the other children in the room. Being the weird quiet kid at the time, I met neither of those criteria, so, without thinking, I walked up to a random group of girls and asked to join their group. They let me join, luckily, but they were very set on singing “Sweatshirt” by Jacob Sartorius. We got an 88 (because our performance, and I quote, was missing the wow factor), and I wanted to jump off a bridge. They made a whole choreography for it and everything. I still know most of the words--I hear it in my dreams. Stuff like that is why I don’t sing (in addition to the whole nearly-tone-deaf thing). I go to a different school now, but I’ll never truly live that moment down. Speaking of hardly hearing pitch, we had another chorus program at the tiny Catholic school I went to in the fifth grade (but no band, hence why I didn’t pick up the flute until sixth). The teacher was super stern, and she always had the girls sing the high notes and the boys sing the low notes (even though we were like ten and eleven and no one’s voices would have dropped by then. I guess women can’t sing low; we are simply ♥️ delicate flowers ♥️). But the thing is, even when I am in tune, I have a low vocal range for a girl (and I still did then). So I really should’ve been singing alto or contralto (my range currently is E3 to C6, although I don’t have any training unless fifth grade music class counts. Anyway I imagine my range in fifth grade couldn’t have been too much higher), but the lowest range they even had was alto, and the boys sang that part. The girls--all of us--had to sing soprano. So, I mean, I did try, but one day, we were practicing a church song, and the music teacher glares at us and goes, “One of you is an octave down. You know who you are.” I bet you can’t guess who it was. By the way, I totally didn’t know who I was. The girl next to me had to tap me on the shoulder and tell me. I ended up straining my voice trying to sing up an octave, though, so it turns out my instincts were right. Since I couldn’t hear the difference, I wasn’t that bothered, but I still think about that at night sometimes. Sense of pitch no worky. In a couple of words, Catholic school was an emotional rollercoaster for sure. For better or worse, the furthering of my religious education certainly did shape me as a person, haha. |
AuthorClara Luby is a student at Jenkintown High School. She has been a creative type since she was small, and, though shy in real life, can talk--or, write, rather--for a long time about things that interest her or that she thinks may interest others. She keeps this blog as a place to just talk about, well, anything really. Stop by and listen to her whenever you feel like it. Archives
February 2023
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