Seoul Music

A few days ago, Annie Ko of the band Love X Stereo, wrote a column in the Guardian about her favorite Seoul-related songs. It’s a pretty good list, too, and includes Cho Yong-pil’s “Seoul Seoul Seoul,” He6’s “Come On Baby,” and Lee Sangeun’s “Secret Garden” (not to mention smartly adding her own “Soul City”).

So that got me thinking about other Seoul-related songs. Of course, Byul.org put together a CD last year featuring indie bands singing about Seoul, called Seoul Seoul Seoul (I assume in reference to the Cho Yong-pil song).

But, to be honest, most of those songs did not excite me terribly much. I guess it is hard to write songs about a city (even if Jay-Z makes it look easy). What other Seoul-related songs are there?

There’s Yang Hee-eun’s “Road to Seoul”:

And Yang Byung-jib’s “Seoul Sky 1” (a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “New York Town” that starts this video) and “Seoul Sky 2” (a cover of Phil Ochs’ “Lou Marsh”, at 21:17):

Add4’s “Seoul Square” (starting at 05:00):

And I supposed you could include Neon Bunny’s entire album Seoulight, if only because of its name (and because it is so catchy). Here’s “Falling” from that album:

I’m sure there’s plenty more that I’m missing, but those are some pretty good ones.

UPDATE: Okay, I suck — I totally forgot about Hyeuni’s “Third Han River Bridge.” One of the most iconic Seoul songs of all time. HA!