꽃갈피 (A Flower Bookmark)

The record

꽃갈피 (A Flower Bookmark) is a special remake album by IU, released on 16 May 2014 with seven tracks, every one of them a song from an earlier generation sung again. The title track is ‘My Old Story’. It is the first record to follow the third full-length album Modern Times of October 2013 and its December repackage, Modern Times – Epilogue.

The album introduction says IU, who listens to old songs by habit, picked the seven herself, and that the remakes were made to keep as much of the originals’ feeling as possible while folding in a colour of her own. The same text explains the record’s name as a pressed flower left between the pages of an old book.

Reviews

IZM reviewed the record in May 2014. Hwang Seon-eop wrote that “there is barely a reinterpretation to speak of; she has taken the songs on as a joint shareholder whose stake is her own sensibility”. On the arrangements he wrote that “on a lightened live-session base, the force that would normally be spread across several elements has this time been concentrated largely in the vocal”.

Idology (아이돌로지) carried three writers on the record in its new-release column ‘1st Listen’ on 26 May 2014. macrostar wrote: “The right timing, the right song choices, the right performance.” ML wrote that “what is fun is that these are not memories remade to today’s fashion; the record concentrates on producing the déjà vu of IU having been active back then”, and added that “the album cover, the fonts, the sound and the props in the music videos are each tuned carefully enough that the concept rewards chewing over”.

Mimyo, at the same outlet, wrote a piece on the record alone on 17 June 2014. He read it as an album that “musically, too — if one must pick at it — follows the world of each original rather than the era the originals sat in”.

Billboard placed the record third in “Best K-Pop Albums of 2014”, published on 11 December 2014. Jeff Benjamin wrote that “the result is a soothing mix of classic K-pop melodies, some that have been given a fascinating sonic spin, like the disco-flavored cover of ‘Pierrot Laugh at Us.’”

Among the tracks

The title track, ‘My Old Story’, was written and released by Cho Duk-bae in 1985. The album introduction says the arranger Kim Je-hwi’s guitar and piano sit with a string quartet and an accordion.

The third track, ‘Pierrot Laughs At Us’, is Kim Wan-sun’s from 1991, and more than one writer picked it as the track the record moved furthest. Mimyo wrote that “the one that took the original furthest is ‘Pierrot Laughs At Us’”. Hwang Seon-eop wrote that the song, “which turns the elements of dance music analogue through keyboards and harmony, carries on the original’s feeling with a dry vocal that keeps the emotion out”.

The second track, ‘Flower’, is Kim Kwang-seok’s from 1991; Hwang wrote that on it, “which borrows elements of Latin music, a sensibility like a blazing flame is put in the lead”. The fourth, ‘When Love Passes By’, is Lee Moon-sae’s from 1987, and the sixth, ‘Dreams In Summer Night’, is the song Kim Hyun-sik sang in 1988 and Yoon Sang’s first composition to be released. Hwang wrote of the pair that “‘When Love Passes By’ and ‘Dreams In Summer Night’ show an outstanding power to land the originals’ sensibility in the present exactly as it was”, and Kim Young-dae wrote: “I had always thought ‘Dreams In Summer Night’ a slightly lighter and clearer song than either Yoon Sang or Kim Hyun-sik made it, and it turns out to fit IU’s tone rather well.” Mimyo pointed at the same song’s arrangement, writing that “the chord progression of ‘Dreams In Summer Night’ uses the delicate, ornate chord work we now associate with Yoon Sang rather than the folk-leaning arrangement of 1988”.

The fifth track, ‘Meaning of You’, is Sanulrim’s from 1984, and Kim Chang-wan, who wrote the original, features on it. The closing ‘Boom Ladi Dadi’ is Clon’s from 1996; the album introduction says it was arranged with a ukulele over a Hawaiian hula rhythm and that Clon themselves take the rap.

Numbers

In “Best K-Pop Albums of 2014”, published by Billboard on 11 December 2014, A Flower Bookmark placed third of the ten.

Afterwards

The single SOGYEOKDONG, written by Seo Taiji, followed on 2 October that year, and the remake project continued on 22 September 2017 with A Flower Bookmark, Pt. 2.