Real+

The record

Real+ is the single IU released on 17 February 2011, with three tracks. The title track is the opener, ‘Only I Didn’t Know’. It follows Real, the third mini album of two months earlier, under the same producer.

The album introduction on Bugs calls the record a plus album to Real and says Cho Young-chul produced it again. By the same text Yoon Sang and saintbinary wrote the music, Kim Eana the words, and the jazz pianist Kim Kwang-min joined the session. Two of the three tracks are versions of the title track, so the record carries two songs in practice.

‘Only I Didn’t Know’ is Yoon Sang’s. The introduction describes it as a minor-key ballad built on the nostalgic chord work and melody particular to him, with a structure and an instrument layout unlike the minor ballads around it, and a spare scale of played instruments set against a restrained vocal.

Reviews

The Singles Jukebox, a critics’ site where each writer files a short note and a score out of ten, covered the song on 6 December 2011 in the amnesty round it runs for records it missed during the year. Twelve writers filed a note.

Iain Mew scored it 7. He wrote: “I can appreciate the pretty piano figures and slow drip of guitar and strings. I can appreciate the sense of space, the way that it toys with going all full power blast but always holds something back.”

Frank Kogan scored it 9. “This works because she lets the strings hint at something big — romantic seashores, lonely sunsets — while she remains precise and utterly concentrated,” he wrote, and added: “So you get the sense of someone tracing and retracing a tragedy.”

Among the tracks

The second track, ‘Scary Fairy Tale’, was written by saintbinary. The album introduction describes it as a song on a scale that overwhelms the listener, with a waltz rhythm, showy strings and a large chorus, and says its story is of someone who knows they have been left and stays inside the fairy tale anyway, until the waking.

The closing track is the title track again, sung to Kim Kwang-min’s solo piano. The same text calls it a simple arrangement of voice and piano alone, and notes that a jazz pianist’s name is rarely found on a Korean pop record.

Afterwards

The second full-length album Last Fantasy followed nine months later, on 29 November 2011. Its second track, ‘Sleeping Prince’, is Yoon Sang’s as well.