Members of Brown Eyed Soul pose for photos at a press conference about its latest album “Soul Cooke” in Seoul on Dec. 8, 2015. (Image : Yonhap)
SEOUL, Dec. 8 (Korea Bizwire) – With the digitization of life, a shorter attention span has become an epidemic of sorts, hijacking our ability to appreciate more time-consuming things in life.
At least so the R&B quartet Brown Eyed Soul thinks because it means less people are willing to sit down for a full album containing more than a dozen tracks.
But with their fourth album “Soul Cooke,” comprised of 17 songs, the South Korean group says it will try to reverse that trend.
“Everything has become minimalistic these days,” lead singer Jung Yup said. “Each song is like a piece of the puzzle. The reason people should still listen to a full album is because there’s a story we want to tell that can only be learned when you listen to an album from start to finish.”
Not only does it tell a narrative, “Soul Cooke” also offers a panoramic view of American soul music, spanning Philly soul, R&B, modern soul, funk and jazz. In fact, the “e” added to “Cooke,” pays homage to the legendary soul singer Sam Cooke.
So far, the group seems to be on the right track — as of Tuesday morning, “Melody of the Night,” one of the two title tracks, was topping eight local charts, including MelOn, Mnet and Olleh Music.
Jung Yup (L) and Naul of Brown Eyed Soul exchange looks at a press conference discussing the group’s fourth album “Soul Cooke” in Seoul on Dec. 8, 2015. (Image : Yonhap)
Members of Brown Eyed Soul said if anything, they had expected the other title track “Home” to do so since “Melody of the Night” is more experimental, being the first known Philly soul track sung in Korean.
“I didn’t think ‘Melody of the Night’ would be this successful. But now that I think about it, it makes sense because it is a melody-heavy song,” member Naul said. “We were actually really concerned about singing it in Korean because it seemed as if the lyrics should be in English. But I’m even more satisfied that the Korean lyrics turned out so well.”
But Brown Eyed Soul denied being an arbiter on what “Korean-style soul music” should sound like.
“We’re just making the kind of music we grew up listening to,” Jung Yup said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s ‘black music.’ The race is not important.”
(Yonhap)
