The end of the year is always the perfect time to reflect on the past months and to look to the future.

We don’t want to get lost in all the negative aspects of such a peculiar year, so despite our natural pessimism, we’d far prefer to hope for a better year to come (we don’t want to jinx it, but it couldn’t be much worse).

Given the circumstances, we would rather remember all the good things that have happened this year. One of which was our fortuitous discovery of Kim Hyun Joong.

We still remember it fondly – it was back in end of February, during our first lockdown, while searching for music videos filmed in Paris, that we stumbled upon his quite by chance.

Visually, “WHY” video was stunning, but we thought no more of it at the time. His being a non-English speaker and singing in a language we could not understand meant that we had to do with a somewhat approximate translation of his lyrics, making the whole thing seemingly less engaging for us.

We were wrong and “Seemingly” being the operative word!

We cannot say how or why – call it destiny or serendipity if you will – but this singer’s name and video made their nest somewhere in the deepest corners of our minds, because days later, we would find ourselves yearning to find out more.

At first, it was a struggle to identify his and we kicked ourselves for not jotting down the exact spelling of his name. Due to the similarities between a lot of Korean names, our search often led us down the wrong path. Being one or two letters off meant we would find ourselves, meeting a girl singer,  reading up on artists long since passed, or a despot that we would much rather not encounter in a dark alley.

Once we finally got it right, we were no longer simply dreaming of “WHY” on the parisian Pont Alexandre III, but rather of “FOURS SEASONS” all around Paris city ….so near and so far from us at the end.
It was then that we finalised we were done for, that this melody and that voice catched us and were all we could think about.

As per usual, and as is the case for anyone fascinated by a new artist, we quickly found ourselves:

• Searching and researching, looking up the complete works to uncover “Everything about  Kim Hyun Joong”;
• Realising that we had gone without such a wonder for the past 15 years of our lives;
• Creating Facebook and YouTube accounts just to learn more (despite swearing that we never would);
• Discovering and becoming addicted to sappy soap dramas;

 

And logging in to YouTube every week for a new episode following this artist, living his life and sharing snippets of it with us, cooking, eating, cooking again, eating some more, and perhaps in spite of himself, becoming more and more endearing as time went by.

It’s been nine long months since then (nine an amazing number…)

We don’t know how much longer we will be caught up in this whirlwind, but we’re quite happy where we are for now.

If we had to make a wish for 2021, it would be to see Kim Hyun Joong perform live in Paris. Let’s be realistic though; there’s little chance of filling the Stade de France or Bercy Accord Arena stadiums in Paris with French or European fans, and opting for a smaller venue or even a prestigious hall like the Olympia or Le Grand Rex simply wouldn’t be lucrative enough for an artist and their musicians coming from so far away with so much equipment…

So instead, we prefer a simpler wish.

We wish you all a reason to have :

 

A smile and a song*  on your lips for the next 365 days!

 

 

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(*) a Kim Hyun Joong’  song of course

Smile !