Korea, and the world at large, seems to be going through a bit of a retro music boom these days, focusing on the 80s aesthetic with both original and cover releases. Stella Jang’s Beautiful is perhaps one of the best executions of this trend I’ve listened to yet.
We’ve seen Stella before in this column, with a beautifully mellow entry that combined her entrancing voice with smooth coffee-table jazz. I’m happy to report that her vocals remain alive and well in 2018's Beautiful, and matches just as well with retro as it does with trumpets and piano.
The music video above has a few interesting traits, too; note how the props that appear in the video tend to gradually modernize throughout the course of the song, starting with the portable cassette player at 0:16 and ending with the (very modern) AirPods at 3:40.
Beautiful was originally released in 1984 and performed by the Yoon Son Il band; listen to the original, too.