IU – Above the Time

Sometimes, you forget how beautiful, talented and smart she is… Woah. I pasted a comment from YT explaining the MV at the bottom.

This MV is supposed to be a continuation of the storyline in You and I. I think the storyline is quite clear – it is about a couple that can only be together in a certain place and time. You first have Lee Hyun Woo who sits working hard away at the gears and clocks, trying to get to a place and time where IU is. The title of the song is “Above the Time”, but the Korean title actually translates to “Time that is (시간의) outside (바깥)”. This means that they have to meet in a place and time that is beyond the current reality – they have to meet in another realm. The first line of the chorus sings “when we finally meet outside the confines of time” and that when they do, she is “going to dance until she is short of breath”. That is exactly what they do when they meet.

But their time together is limited. The ending of the song sings about not being together in the future, about lost time for the guy (because he travelled to another time zone to meet her). This is why Lee Hyun Woo cries. Because he is back in a reality without her.

What I loooove about this song is that the lyrics are about quite the cliche love story if you think about it – lovers who met at the correct time and place but cannot be together. But the lyrics are completely nuanced. It talks about the waiting, being in different places, and it is almost philosophical – being in a different realm. And I am not sure if she wrote the lyrics while she happened to be filming Hotel Del Luna because there’s the mention of the moon at the start and end (“wish upon a rising moon” and “the moon that looks down on them”). It is a lot like Jang Man Wol’s and Gu Chan Sung’s story – they exist as a couple in a realm in between life and death, and that their story ends as Jang Man Wol goes to a different world, and Gu Chan Sung returns to the real world without her.

Jieun ah, how can you ever be so thoughtful?

~brbuglysobbing~

Edit: Also did anyone spot the You and I elements in the MV? The duck plushie at the start, the music scores that wrapped around the boat reads “Last Fantasy”, the photos from the You and I MV… sigh the level of detail is insane T_T