Review: Jonghyun - radio listeners inspire tour de force on Collection Story Op. 1

There's moment on Collection Story Op. 1, Jonghyun's second solo album and his second this year where it sounds like he's singing "Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou". That wouldn't be unusual - mainstream K-pop is littered with English profanity. But that's probably not Jonghyun's style - although that's not to say he doesn't get a little racy every now and again.
Let's take a moment to revisit that.

I'll give you a minute.

Back to the music. 

What he is actually singing on the slick, Minneapolis-style funk jam, is its title, "Like you". 

It's one of the many captivating tracks that he wrote for his radio show Blue Night that have been packaged into an album with arguably the worst cover art of the year. 

Much is made of the fact that Jonghyun writes lyrics and sometimes composes music and produces; although as with YG and Big Bang, who also make a big deal of such achievements, there’s really no point making a song and dance about a credit if the end result is mediocre. Or worse.

His first album, Base, is full of great songs from a range of writers, but the tracklist’s weakest link is the half-assed Beautiful Tonight, which Jonghyun composed. Having said that, the hidden track, Fortune Cookie - also by him - is a total jam, and the song he wrote and produced for Lim Kim's amazing Simple Mind album, No More, is a quirky slice of exotic electronic pop. This album shows there is more where that came from; and also that he has a few more Beautiful Tonights in him as well.

Where Base roamed through genres in classic K-pop style, this album is more cohesive, contained to jazz, R&B, ballads and some thrilling chamber pop.

The song being most heavily promoted, End of the Day, is the weakest: it's a pretty run of the mill ballad. I won't bother linking to the MV. Go to YouTube and go nuts.

From there, it's all uphill. U&I is a poppy R&B track with a noodling rhodes and finger-snaps. The aforementioned Like You, produced by Philtre, cranks up the energy further. It's one of the best tracks on the album but it is nothing compared to what’s next.

Track four, Diphylleia grayi (Skeleton Flower), is a tour de force and likely to be one of the songs Jonghyun is remembered for. It's an astoundingly beautiful piece of chamber pop arranged by violinist YiNile. With elegant piano playing and gorgeous choral singing, it's  reminiscent of some of Kate Bush's work, which makes sense given that he did a lovely cover of This Woman's Work while promoting Base. His singing is astonishing; his falsetto utterly flawless. I can't find an embeddable video that isn't likely to be torn down by SM at any given moment, but you can watch him sing part of it here, or listen to it in this Spotify playlist I put together.

I’m Sorry - also produced by YiNiLe - is in the same vein, but more stripped back, with a mournful cello adding a melancholy warmth. There are two cool jazz-funk numbers, 2:34 and Fine, co-produced by Heuk Tae, who composed one of my favourite tracks from last year, Topp Dogg’s awesome ‘90s throwback Annie. Fine is particularly good; being a collection of cleverly layered, simple jazz grooves.

The last track, Maybe Tomorrow, has rather more whimsy than I’d like. Harden up the electronics and put Lim Kim on vocals and maybe there’d be something there.

Jonghyun clearly has his eye on a career as a writer-producer and this is a pretty good calling card. The impeccable singing throughout is enough to make anyone feel sorry for that eventuality.