Maps of Music

The Colors of My Life (2004)

Where the lyrics of The Colors of My Life take you, and where it was really made.

Lee Soo-young's two grand prize awards linked to the title track 'Whirlily' were earned by sales of the earlier remake album Classic, not by this album.

Place unknown

Do you know where this album was recorded, or where its cover was shot? Tell us and we will add it to the map.

Album story

Overview

• Lee Soo-young's 6th full-length studio album, released in 2004
• Most tracks are relaxed and easy to listen to
• Only one uptempo Latin-disco blend, 'You Want Me'; the rest are calm songs
• 'Silent Eyes' is a grand CCM song; the outro 'Holy Cross Day' carries a religious tone
• Title track 'Whirlily' uses 6/8 time, which is rare in Korean pop
• Released as a limited edition with a DVD; no booklet, and the DVD includes a photo gallery

Background

• The remake album Classic, released in January the same year, was a huge hit
• That hit made the market's expectations for the next album enormous
• Lee cancelled all planned Japan activities and started work on a domestic album from summer
• Lee has said she made the album hoping it would become an 'easy listening' record
• MGR, the composer and producer central to her earlier sound, was not part of the team
• Lee Young-ki and Hwang Sung-je filled that role
• The earlier album drew fan complaints about excessive trend-following; this album tried a different direction

Recording

• A string session was arranged on every track to raise the quality
• Irish whistle by Harim was planned for the title track, but it was removed because it reduced the sense of longing; strings filled about half the song instead
• The whistle part was instead inserted into 〈이별 후 愛 이별〉, written by Kim Hyung-seok

Sources: ko.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Career

• Lee Soo-young (Korean: 이수영; born Lee Ji-yeon, 이지연 on April 12, 1979) is a South Korean ballad singer.
• She debuted in 1999 with the hit album I Believe and quickly gained popularity due to her strong singing skills.
• During the mid-2000s, she was one of South Korea's best-selling singers, selling more than 700,000 albums in 2004 alone despite a recession in the music industry at the time.
• In 2001, she sang the official Korean version of the Final Fantasy X song "Suteki Da Ne", titled "얼마나 좋을까" ("Eolmana Joheulkka").
• She released her seventh album, Grace, on January 21, 2006; it performed very well and shot straight to the top of the charts.
• The album's popularity led to a limited edition repackage of Grace, of which only 30,000 copies were produced.

Personal life

• She married her boyfriend of one year in October 2010 and has one son, born in July 2011.

Acting

• Appeared in the KBS2 TV series The Accidental Couple (2009) as Jo Seung-eun.
• Appeared in the film The Quiz Show Scandal (2010) as the radio singer.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• The title track 〈휠릴리〉 is a 6/8 swing song that was often described as heavy to take in at the time
• After it began its broadcast promotion, 〈휠릴리〉 swept various music charts
• The second single 'Andante' is a very slow song, and Lee did not promote it as a second single

Reappraisal

• Over time, 〈휠릴리〉 became iconic for its strong colour and turned into a signature song that stands for her peak years
• 'Andante' is described as weaker than the album tracks 〈순간〉 and 〈이별 후 愛 이별〉
• 〈순간〉 and 〈이별 후 愛 이별〉 received strong support as follow-up songs

Records

• The album sold 340,000 copies
• It passed 200,000 copies in its first week
• Sales were strong in the first week but did not hold steady over time as the 4th and 5th albums did
• The album is widely linked with two grand prizes, the Golden Disc grand prize and the 10대 가수 가요제 grand prize, but the award criteria show these were earned by the sales of the earlier remake album Classic, not by this album

Sources: ko.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• The title track's whistle part was dropped from the song and moved to 〈이별 후 愛 이별〉 instead.
• The track 〈JR2076932〉 is a instrumental version of 〈휠릴리〉, and its title is said to be the passport number of Lee Do-hyung, head of Lee's agency E-Ga Entertainment at the time.
• 〈Holy Cross Day〉 is the outro, and its name adds a religious colour to the album.
• Simply Sunday, a singer under the same agency, wrote 〈꽃〉, which later became the title track of the 2005 special album.
• 〈그는 알았을까..〉 sounds very close to 〈모르지〉 from the 5th album, and both songs were written by Sim Hyun-bo.

Sources: ko.wikipedia.org

Maps of Ages ↗ (mapsofages.com)

Privacy · Contact