Fashion Diva vs. 소녀시대 Black Pearl

On the 13th of April Seohyun released an OST for the SBS drama Fashion King, entitled I’ll Be Waiting. Fashion King is a story of young aspiring designers in Dongdaemun Market as they dream of success, and the relationships, love, and challegnes they face along the way. Fellow member Yuri is also an actress in the drama and plays Choi Anna, one of the four lead characters in the series. I’ll Be Waiting is a ballad title. As part of the drama’s OST, it plays an essential role in evoking emotions from the viewer during a melancholic or dramatic scene.

The song begins with a simple slow piano instrumental, an opening all too familiar with ballads and does weakly in grasping attention. While it isn’t the greatest build-up, it performs well enough to open a transition into Seohyun’s verse. As she begins her verse she captures the emotional depth of the song as expected, controlling her intonation to sound as that of a frustrated lover.

The song enters into its chorus fairly quick, which is perhaps a big plus when you’re trying to fit the good parts of a song into short drama segments. At this point the background music starts rolling into a rhythmical beat as Seohyun continues to sing, which is good build-up.

The bridge of the song is relatively safe for a ballad. While Seohyun’s vocals and falsettos are undoubtedly top-notch and do lots to impress here, unfortunately the arrangement of the bridge doesn’t garner much of a ‘wow’ from me.

The song concludes satisfyingly with Seohyun ending her chorus followed by short piano alternations, but there is no thrilling end to expect.

My final thoughts regarding the song is that it is the standard for your typical ballad. The instrumentals are well-done especially around the middle of the song and towards its end. The song’s arrangement impresses but never takes risks.

As for Seohyun’s singing, she doesn’t push her limits as much as she did in It’s Okay Even If It Hurts which disappoints me slightly. Her emotional delivery is showing some great improvement, though she could still use some more practice in expressing them as she still falls behind from the likes of Taeyeon, Tiffany or Sunny. Seohyun has always been amazing in terms of singing technique though and is also probably one of the best in her group for it. In this song her singing technique propels strongly and makes up for what she lacks in emotion.

All in all I enjoyed listening to this OST. It won’t be one of the more memorable tracks, but it’s still a solid ballad and will probably do its job right when it is used in the drama.

Some of you like ratings so I’ll just throw one in here for the sake of it. I give the song a 6/10.