Not only was the completeness of the album tracks impressive but also ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’, the title track, and ‘Better off’ drew attention since the songs had been written by Jong-hyun. Attention, please, for those who are wondering about his song-writing story. STARCAST releases the notes that Jong-hyun made while working on the lyrics of ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’, the title track of SHINee’s third repackage album ‘The Misconceptions of Us’.
This is the picture of notes that Jong-hyun made for himself to write the lyrics of ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’, the title track of‘The Misconceptions of Us’. You can see the marks of his struggle, the process of lyrics-writing, and funny scribbles on the paper. Now, let us take a closer look at Jong-hyun’s lyrics notes based on three points.
FOCUS POINT 1: Hits to solve the mystery of the name of the title track.
The Korean version of the song title ‘The Distance between Us’ has a clear meaning, but you may not be sure about ’Selene 6.23’. A closer look at Jong-hyun’s notes will allow you to find a very interesting fact.
- Selene
Please look at the notes on the right bottom of the first page. You can see the word ‘Selene’ that Jong-hyun emphasized with stars and underlines. Right below the line he wrote, “Greek myth. The goddess of the first moon.” According to a dictionary, Selene is the name of the goddess of the moon from Greek Mythology and it means the moon in Greek. ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’ sings about a one-sided love. The song presumably compared the subject of the one-sided love to the moon (Selene), implying a double meaning.
The notes demonstrate how deeply Jong-hyun thought about the song title. He considered ‘Artemis’, but he chose ‘Selene’ after all since he did not want the song to give an impression of singing about a god. He considered ‘Luna’ as an option, but he boldly gave it up since it is the name of f(x)’s member Luna (Refer to the third page of his lyrics notes).
- 6.23
We know the meaning of ‘Selene’ to some extent now, but what is 6.23? It seems to be a date or a time. If you are wondering, please look at the second page of his lyrics notes. Can you see the words Super moon (2013.6.23) next to Ver. 1 on the left-upper part of the page? June 23, 2013, was the annual day when the Super moon was observed with the Moon’s closes encounter with Earth for 2013. The lyrics of ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)‘ compares a one-sided love to the moon that looks close to us but actually is far away. When you hear the song again after you realize the hidden meaning of the lyrics, you will be able to find the song totally new.
FOCUS POINT 2: Words that were almost included in the song.
Jong-hyun’s lyrics notes contain words that were almost included in the song. Let us look for the words that were not picked for‘’The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’ but are worth having a look.
‘My tears surge like waves.’ Pass as it is too childish.
‘Even if I reach my hand to you’. Pass as it is too direct.
‘I end up looking for you whenever I am lost. I say hello and talk alone.’ Isn’t it good in its own way? Jong-hyun, however, excluded the sentence from the lyrics for ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’ by saying, “It sounds like the song Snail.”
We can feel how much Jong-hyun tried to come up with better words for the lyrics by relentlessly thinking about them.
FOCUS POINT 3: The title ‘The Distance Between Us (Selene 6.23)’ is finally determined after long and hard thinking. Plus, Jong-hyun’s detailed notes.
You can see the marks of Jong-hyun’s struggle to determine the right name of the song on the third page of his lyrics notes.
He already set the Korean title as ‘The Distance between Us’. He was agonizing over which one to choose between ‘Super moon 6.23’ and ‘Selene 6.23’. Finally, he selected ‘Selene 6.23’ as a subtitle based on the reason that the inclusion of the word ‘moon’ removes the double meaning.
Let us have a look at Jong-hyun’s detailed notes.
He briefly wrote, “I’m hungry,” while working on the first verse of the song. He expressed his physical hunger even by drawing an underline as well as his hunger for music. We hope that he does not skip a meal however busy he is. In addition, on the third page, Jong-hyun left a cute drawing of the moon, showing his lyrics-writing style where he comes up with words like drawing a picture.
So far we have looked at how the lyrics of ‘The Distance between Us (Selene 6.23)’ were born through Jong-hyun’s lyrics notes. The three pages allowed us to look at how Jong-hyun wrote the lyrics by taking various approaches to the object ‘moon’ and related emotions, and to glance at the carefulness of Jong-hyun who never lets down his guard on picking a single word.
Now that we have gone through the process of the birth of the lyrics, let us listen to ‘The Distance Bewteen Us (Selene 6.23)’ once again for a review. A new and more inspirational listening may be possible.
This is the end for the report on Jong-hyun’s lyrics notes.
Source: Naver News
Lyrics Notes and Photograph: Jong-hyun, SM Entertainment
cr: forevershinee
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