Offing is one of those Korean artists that I randomly stumbled upon during my late-night YouTube listening sessions. You know the ones: where you pick a song for the mood and you let the websiteās auto-next-song function dictate your night. No one else does that? Just me?
I donāt know how YouTube found this obscure indie artist to slot into the ānext upā position, but whatever Google is doing with its algorithm, itās working. Offingās Mushroom Wave is exactly my kind of song: chill, thoughtful, down-to-earth, melodic.
The oft-repeated word in Mushroom Waveās lyrics, ulleong, is one of those colorful Korean words that stands as an example of what the language often does best: distill a complicated, nuanced emotion into a single syllable that then can be used poetically, musically, and inserted into conversation. Ulleong might be best translated as āupset stomachā, although here, itās used in its more obscure definition to describe an undulating wave. Combined with the very similarly-sounding illeong, Mushroom Waveās lyrics contain some of the most delightful rhyme schemes Iāve come across in Korean music.
