Textual Analysis - I Remember

I have been into Kpop for a very long time and I don’t remember a time where a rookie’s debut song was as influential and meaningful as this. Bang Yong Guk (BYG) is a rapper under T.S Entertainment and he was featured in Secret’s Song Ji Eun in her own solo song. He then debuted with “I remember” which features BEAST’s Yoseob. The mixture of Bang Yong Guks husky rapping and Yoseobs’s emotional vocals gives this song a unique emotional feeling where the fans are able to feel the exact emotion as to what they are singing.

The creativity used in this music video is unlike other music videos. It’s a mixture of a performance as well as a deep and sorrowful narrative. The story line is of a man is thinking about his girlfriend, whose image is shown to us. She’s smiling and it seems that they were on good terms. But the scene abruptly changes to where we see the couple fighting and arguing. It seems that the relationship is abusive but it’s not - it’s just how they loved one another. But where is the girlfriend? It turns out that she had been abducted by criminals, who are currently in a standoff and the boyfriend doesn’t know what to do. But he makes up his mind to go and protect her and takes a gun along with him. He knocks down the police officers, who end up shooting him and he fires at the criminals, killing them but taking in more bullets. Of course most relationships won’t be this extreme, but it shows the determination that course through the boyfriend’s body and how he wants to protect his girlfriend the entire time, despite the rough patches that they went through. The use of Todorov's theory in this music video is perfect due to the style of music and plot.

Dance – There wasn’t much dancing as it’s a mixture of a performance and a story based music video. It isn’t very surprising as BYG made sure to focus on vocals and story as he didn’t want the audience to loose attention to the meaning of the song.

Bang Yong Guk has red hair in this music video which always stand out against most of the location, the hair may connote danger or pain which he is feeling, this will reflect to the audiences own feelings too. The dark outfits which all the characters sport connotes death as well as seriousness. This fits perfectly with the atmosphere of the music video creating even more tension. The use of a brick house may connote that their relationship is solid and unbreakable unless an anomaly happens. A few of the bricks are black which may connote that there is a threat to their relationship.

We are first introduced to the music video by seeing and hearing police sirens this instantly alerts the audience that something bad has happened without giving away the narrative, this scene then fades out to black where we then see a close up of a piano using a pan. The piano is old and dirty with what looks like shot gun marks and blood splatters which may connote that this is the equivalent to what happens next or it could in fact be a metaphor for the guy. The use of high key lighting behind the piano suggests that he has ascent to a better place.

The next scene which takes place is when the guy finds his gun inside a locker which is red again indicating that something hazardous will happen. A long shot is then used to show the location where high key lighting is emitting from outside the door which may connote innocence and purity. The man then moves into the light and vanishes which may show how he will go to heaven for his heroic actions.