Sunday, August 02, 2015

Ben, kpop singer, formerly the lead singer of Bebe Mignon

Ben (벤) is a K-Pop solo artist who has recently done a number of wonderful songs for Kdramas. My two favorites were released in South Korea in 2015:

"Stay" -- OST Part 1 for Oh My Ghost  (A delightful romantic comedy currently airing on Friday and Saturday evenings on tvN a South Korean cable network) Here are the lyrics -- English and romanization.





and

"You" --- OST Part 4 for Healer  (A really wonderful drama with suspense, action, and romantic comedy elements that aired last winter)  The song was released on January 12, 2015.  YesASIA has the Healer soundtrack available for purchase on CD.  I checked iTunes, and it doesn't seem to be in the US catalog. (I didn't check South Korea.)




Ben's real name is Lee Eun Young. She took the moniker "Ben" because the audition song that kicked off her professional music career was the Jackson 5's "Ben."  She was the lead singer of Bebe Mignon which debuted in 2010 and disbanded in 2011.

As the lead signer for Bebe Mignon she did "One Women" -- OST Part 5 for Secret Garden (A cute romantic comedy with supernatural elements.)


She has appeared on the KBS program Immortal Song 2 (AKA Immortal Songs: Singing the Legend) and I found these songs from her appearances there:

"Brown Memory"  (This is a Trot Song.) I looked but couldn't easily find anything that identified the original artist or origin of the song.  It's probably there, but in Korean. I searched under 갈색 추억 (the Korean title of the song) but nothing that was obviously helpful came up in the first few links, and my Korean is too rudimentary to search much more.

Here is Ben singing Brown Memory:


Here is Ben singing A Goose's Dream (The song originated with Carnival in 1997. I believe it was written by Kim Dong Ryul of Carnival.  Insooni did a famous cover of it in 2007.) :


Here is the same song from the drama Dream High where it's a duet -as per Carnival's original recording of it. In the drama they sing it in an audition for admission to a prestigious high school for the performing arts.  Here are the lyrics in Hangul, romanization, and English.



And last but not least I found this Making Video (MV) for a collaboration for "Celebrate Love"



THE VIBE (a South Korean entertainment company formed by Vibe) sponsored this release. It's a collaboration between 4Men, Vibe, Ben, Im Se Jun and MIIII.

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