If a Korean pop song could ever be featured in a Disney animated film, this would be it.
Kim Dong Ryul is a veteran of the Korean ballad pop scene, having debuted back in 1994 and dabbled in many sub-genres of soft, soulful easy-listening music since then. Fairy Tale is his latest, and a collaboration with IU—one of the modern-era artists leading the charge to diversify the K-Pop scene.
Fairy Tale is a great example of Kim Dong Ryul’s bass vocals and emotion-inducing vibrato, but IU’s feature here lifts the whole song up to a new level and truly makes it feel like a duet out of a Disney movie—between a prince and a princess, maybe. The gorgeous music video, with its hand-drawn, minimalistic animation only adds to this song’s splendor. It’s one of the most romantic, calming songs I’ve had the pleasure to listen to this year.