When you’ve delved into K-Pop as deeply as I have (to be clear, this is not a brag), YouTube sometimes suggests artists, and songs, that you had no idea ever existed. This is how I found Haruna.
I knew nothing about Haruna before yesterday. I still know basically nothing; English-language sites turn up zilch, and Korean sites are similarly bereft of information. What I do know is that she debuted in 2018, and Closer is her third single after Don’t Call It A Night and Is It Raining?. For the vast majority of K-Pop fans out there, Haruna isn’t even a blip on the radar.
But the whole point of this column is for me to share some of the better K-Pop that exists, and Closer is damn near close to perfection in one of my preferred sub-genres: the cheerful, acoustic, upper-octave piano, perfect-for-a-spring-day kind of music. I dig it, and I hope you do too.
