Modern Times

The record

Modern Times is IU’s third full-length album, released on 8 October 2013 with 13 tracks. The title track is ‘The Red Shoes’. It came a year and five months after the second full-length album Last Fantasy and the single The Spring of Twenty.

The album introduction on Bugs says the record was planned and made on the theme of maturity through musical growth. By the same text it took nine months, from the first recording session in January 2013 to the last that September, and it holds swing, jazz, bossa nova, Latin pop and folk. The same text notes that she composed two of the songs and wrote words for four.

The title track, ‘The Red Shoes’, was composed by Lee Min-soo to a lyric by Kim Eana. The album introduction says it took its idea from the Andersen tale in which a pair of red shoes keeps the wearer dancing against her will, and that it was built on 1930s big-band swing and recorded in Japan by local big-band players, improvising under the direction of Toyama Kazuhiko.

Reviews

IZM reviewed the album in October 2013. Lee Gi-seon wrote that “even heard with its function and everything the singer has done until now set aside, the record is lined with fine tracks”. Of the opening song he wrote that “‘Love of B’ carries a blunt feeling over the solid playing of the gypsy guitarist Park Ju-won”, and of the title track that “the big-band sound inside its dramatic build is especially interesting”, adding that “it even shifts tempo in the back half, steering the song deftly to its climax”.

The Korea Herald ran the album on 18 October 2013 in ‘Eyelike’, its short-notice page for new records. Cha Yo-rim wrote that “like many of the tracks on the album, vintage sounds and modern effects are put together artfully, forming a fresh but familiar compilation of songs”, and that the record “has a distinct carefree feel that is reminiscent of jazz during the Roaring Twenties”.

Billboard placed the album second in “The 25 Greatest K-Pop Albums of the 2010s” on 17 December 2019. The entry, signed with initials only, finds that “the artfulness of the LP lies in how she strings together bossa nova, swing, and folk while putting a modern spin on the sounds of the Roaring Twenties”, and adds: “If K-pop is a multimedia phenomenon, Modern Times is an auditory journey that pays homage to the silver screen.”

Among the tracks

‘The Red Shoes’ is the fourth track. The Korea Herald wrote that it “showcases IU’s vocals in a cabaret-style setting, complete with blaring horns and lively percussion”. Billboard called the same song “a big band extravaganza inspired by a fairy tale about a dancer with magic shoes” and wrote that its adaptation “jerks the tempo around to reflect that ‘Mr. Shoes’ has a life of its own”.

The Singles Jukebox covered the song on 16 October 2013, on a page where each writer files a score out of ten and a short note. Iain Mew scored it 7 and picked out a line of the lyric: “‘They say you can go to better places if you wear better shoes’ is a superb line, just as easily read as whimsical or cynical.”

The opening track, ‘Love of B’, was composed by Park Ju-won to a lyric IU wrote herself; the album introduction describes it as gypsy jazz in the style Django Reinhardt invented. The second, ‘Everybody Has Secrets’, was written by Yoon Sang and east4A and sung with Ga-in of Brown Eyed Girls, and The Korea Herald called it a bossa nova number that mixes the two singers’ voices well.

The tenth track, ‘A Gloomy Clock’, was composed and sung with Jonghyun of SHINee. The same outlet placed it among the most modern-sounding tracks on the album and wrote that its “bubbling, ticking, whistling and xylophone sounds” make for a playful song. Choi Baek-ho sings on the eighth track, ‘Walk With Me, Girl’, and Yang Hee-eun on the eleventh, ‘Daydream’.

Numbers

In “The 25 Greatest K-Pop Albums of the 2010s”, published by Billboard on 17 December 2019, the record placed second of the 25.

Afterwards

The follow-up record Modern Times – Epilogue arrived two months later, on 20 December 2013, and A Flower Bookmark, a set of older songs sung again, followed in May 2014.