"사랑을 했다 (Love Scenario)” by iKon, Thursday, November 17, 2022

Writing a song that an entire nation sings for a year or more is no small feat. In 2018, the K-pop band iKon released a single that was hummed by the elderly and even banned in some elementary schools for what teachers and administrators said was inappropriate lyrics, but was really about the students singing it excessively. Unlike some K-pop bands, iKon's members are often involved with the songwriting process. Kim Han-bin (김한빈), better known by his stage name B.I, took inspiration from the ending scene from the 2016 musical La La Land when writing iKon's "Love Scenario," the song that was called "The Song of the Year" in South Korea in 2018.

THE LOVE SCENARIO WAS CREATED AND NOW THE LIGHTS ARE OFF. Spoiler alert: In the final scene of La La Land, Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) play out a "love scenario" which plays to a beautiful instrumental fantasia. In this fantasy, Mia and Sebastian imagine themselves together, patching up an otherwise ill-fated relationship throughout the film. By the end of the piece, the audience learns that Mia and Sebastian are not actually together in reality and were not able to patch up their differences. But in that instrumental moment--Sebastian playing a piano in a night club and Mia watching him at the piano, the "love scenario" feels more real than what actually happened. B.I wrote "Love Scenario" with lyrics of pining for a lost love, but the group sings the song in a "happy-sad" way. He described the emotion of the song: "I wanted to express what I found regrettable, neither sad nor happy, in the warm farewell." The song reminds listeners that relationships don't always work out, and that just because it didn't work out doesn't mean it's a waste of time to have loved. It reminds me of Alfred Lord Tennyson who said in his poem "In Moratorium" after his friend died at the age of 22 of a brain hemorrhage, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

THE ELECTRIC FEELING IN BETWEEN MY RIBS. "Love Scenario" brings back lots of memories for me. It's not so much about picturing various scenarios in which life could have worked out differently. Instead, the song transports me back to 2018 when the song was everywhere in South Korea, the phone stores, the gym, the cafes, anywhere shopping, and sung in the classroom. And I think about this song today as I think about my former students who took their CSAT today, the only college exam in South Korea held on only one day of the year. The graduating class in 2018 were just second graders in middle school singing that dumb song over and over again. Since I've been teaching for many years at the same school, I've discovered that class dynamics are so important and that some classes are more enjoyable than others. And while teachers are not supposed to have favorite students, I think that my favorite grade of all my years of teaching was this year's graduating class. It might be because of the students' personalities, but I also feel like it was their grade that I finally got it together as a teacher, like the years before I "faked it before I made it" and that year I could stop "faking it." So today, rather than focusing on what could have been, I would rather celebrate the accomplishments my students have made in their learning and I have made in my teaching. Congratulations class of 2022!

Read the English translation on Genius.

Read the Korean lyrics.

Lyric video with English translation: