SF9’s “O Sole Mio (오솔레미오)” — Old school K-pop meets Contemporary K-pop in a post-“Despacito” era

K-pop boyband SF9’s “O Sole Mio” (hangul: 오솔레미오) is a song that blends the standard EDM & hip hop music styles that have been trending for almost a decade in K-pop, with tropical house trends that landed in Korea around 2016, plus Spanish influences that can effortlessly be credited to the thunderous success of Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito”, and lyrics that outpace the usual bilingual spectrum of K-pop (which is known for combining Korean and English lyrics).

Of course it’s not the first time we hear Italian, Spanish and neither Latin in Korean mainstream music. I’m not sure if the lyricists were aware that “sole mio” and “te quiero” are two completely different languages, but either way the lyrics shows the intention to go for a more global approach — the female muse of the persona is even named “Maria”, just like in Ricky Martin’s 1995 hit “Maria”.

It’s no surprise either that a K-pop act is riding the latin wave that took over after “Despacito” became the world’s most successful Spanish-language song since 1996’s “Macarena”, opening doors for other reggaeton/latin hits such as J. Balvin’s “Mi Gente” and Wisin’s “Escapate Conmigo”. Following Western trends is no new thing for K-pop; in 2017 we even saw a group whose entire sonic concept is based on the tropical house trend.

However, to be quite honest, what impresses me the most about “O Sole Mio” is how it manages to combine all these contemporary trends (and by “contemporary” I don’t mean to say they’re recently born, but that they are trending right now), while at the same time bringing back something I haven’t heard in K-pop in a long time.

It has that 90’s europop vibe (funny, the first song that came to my mind when I first heard “O Sole Mio” was E-rotic’s “7 seconds”) and the “ppong” melodic element that I haven’t heard in K-pop since T-ara’s “Cry Cry”, which was released in 2011. “Ppong” is a very characteristic melodic feature that used to be intensely echoed in K-pop songs from the first and second generations of K-pop.

Before becoming world-wide known, K-pop was first a fever in Asian countries. At that time, you’d hear harmonies and melodies with more of a “sad” vibe, with major minor chords (examples: boA’s “Valenti”; SG Wannabe’s “Partner for Life”, T-ara & Supernova’s “Time to Love”) and melodies that resembled the melodic style you’ll hear, for example, in Modern Talking’s “Cheri Cheri Lady” and Alphaville’s “Sounds like a Melody”.

“Ppong” melodies were well accommodated in K-pop because its “sadness” alluded to the roots of Korean traditional music, sounding somehow familiar to the Korean audience.

I can hear it in the chorus of “O Sole Mio”. I can also sense this melancholic and kind of mysterious vibe in the chord progression.

Imagine slowing down a bit of this song’s tempo, erasing the tropical house synthesized elements in the background of the vocals in the verses and pre-chorus, and adding echo to the drums like in Madonna’s “Crazy for You”. See what I’m talking about? It could easily be a Modern Talking song. It could have easily been released in 1987.

However, those old school/Asian-rooted traits blend with lots of 2017’s trending traits, such as:

• the abovementioned tropical house synths;
• the rap part;
• the Spanish guitar that opens the song, just like in “Despacito” and “Escapate conmigo”.

While number 1 is a Western trend that has been incorporated to K-pop for a year or so, number 2 is less recent in K-pop (and also non completely credited to hip hop’s American success, since Korean hip hop history is very rich too), and number 3 is a newcomer.

Like I said above, “O Sole Mio” is obviously not the first Spanish-influenced K-pop song ever, but I can’t think of another one released by a reasonably known K-pop act since “Despacito” bursted worldwide.

Another thing I’m fond of is the producer’s choice for the non-obvious route after the chorus. For the verse and pre-chorus, when listening for the first time, I could swear that after the chorus we’d have a tropical house drop, but instead they put the Spanish guitar again, and it’s just beautiful.

It’s for details like this that I think “O Sole Mio” plays with lots of dualities (old school and contemporary trend, Asian-rooted traits and Western-trends and globalized-approach) in a way that is far more complex than people are labelling it as. Overall, the song reminds me more of 98º’s “Give me just one night” than “Despacito”; but, again, even though it might be intentionally channelling this last one, it does it in a very nice and interesting way.

If “O Sole Mio” means by any fact that SF9 is going to start a new trend in K-pop, I’d be happy if it’s either the old-school melodic & harmonic patterns or the latin-influenced style; although I think it’s too soon to know.