Arts Playlist: Best Underrated East Asian Angst-fests

Listen to Big Bang’s “Haru Haru” for a good cry. By Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

There’s nothing quite like reveling in the angst of a song you can’t understand. East Asian ballads tap into the inexplicable, wrenching aches of heartbreak, loss, or worse: the consequences of p-set procrastination. Not even the best of 2000s alt-rock can evoke the same emotion (sorry, Green Day). Anyone who has ever felt their heart melt as a plaintive power ballad blasted over a crying-in-the-rain scene of an Asian drama can attest to this. These pieces vary on the spectrum of pop and rock, but they all capture something romantic (in the nineteenth century sense of the term) to tide over turbulent souls.

“Singing Got Better” by Ailee

11. It’s still shocking that this is one of Ailee’s less popular songs, but the lyrics about her improved singing after getting her heart broken are evident in this piece’s power vocals.

“Wasted” by Younha

10. Don’t waste a second before giving a listen to this subtle pop ballad. Younha’s entire discography could probably fit on this list, but the compelling pulse of this song has a healthy chance of driving you to the fetal position when you are, well, wasted (or otherwise).

“If I Were You” by 2ne1

9. 2ne1 has plenty of classic power ballads to offer, but this one takes the cake for sheer depth of emotion in just about every performance. It wouldn’t be wrong to put on a live recording of this when you have three and a half minutes to spend enraptured (so, 2 a.m. on a Tuesday).

“Rain Love” by Rainie Yang

8. This 2000s Mando-pop ballad featuring Yang’s mellow voice make for a perfect accompaniment a wet Cambridge afternoon, complete with a plaintive electric guitar solo and a weirdly relatable shot of Yang eating cake alone in front of a refrigerator full of water bottles in the music video.

“Sleep” by Sid

7. By the end of the live performance of this piece, the band’s lead singer is kneeling and hunched over on the stage, crushed by the weight of the Japanese rock feels, which sums up this song pretty well.

“He Isn’t Worth It by Shi Shi

6. This absolute jam from a relatively unknown Taiwanese-Korean artist was on the original soundtrack of the 2016 Taiwanese melodrama “Behind Your Smile.” Inspired by the fantastically problematic romance at the core of the show, the deliciously angry song is definitely worth a listen.

“Congratulations” by Day 6

5. Congratulations! This fantastic song has now entered your life. This passive aggressive jam congratulating a significant other for moving on shines with the capacity to not get old after a dozen replays.

“Breathe” by Lee Hi

4. Lee Hi performs this song with beautiful care and delicacy. While you might listen to other songs on this list in fits of rage or despair, this loving call to slow down and breathe is never not relevant background music for the rat race.

“Blue” by Big Bang

3. It’s not necessarily true that this song is deeply underrated, per se, but Big Bang often gets lost in modern k-pop discourse. The mix of electronic and acoustic elements here are actually surprisingly upbeat for a song about “singing the blues,” but that just goes to show how many shades there are to the angsty pseudo-ballad genre.

“I Need Somebody” by Day 6

2. This song starts off fairly calm and escalates into one of the band’s most rock-inspired works. The chorus’s inquiry, “Why am I alone?” will continue to confound you as the one question your good TF can’t answer.

“Haru Haru” by Big Bang

1. This song is first, because how could anything else be first? You will learn to belt this song without knowing the language. Also, if you’ve ever wanted to bop to a sad song (because why not), this song goes above and beyond for the task.

—Staff writer Jenna X. Bao can be reached at jenna.bao@thecrimson.com