A 1967 Hit Song Led Me to an Amazing Korean Pop-Traditional Fusion Band in 2022
If you pull on a pop music thread, you never know what will come out—threads leading to South Korea in the 2020s and Italy in the 1960s.
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This musical journey has 6 stops along the way. You may know one or two of them, but I think very few people will know all 6 . . . until they get to the end of this article, of course!
As I took this journey over the last several months, I made some unexpected — and happy — music discoveries along the way, including:
- My favorite new band this year, and I can’t listening to their most well-known song — it has an incredible unique sound and beat to it.
- A more recent “new” singer from that I can’t stop listening to, either.
Part 1. The Starting Point — “Let’s Live for Today” by The Grass Roots
This song was a mega-hit back in 1967, and it still gets played today.
The Grass Roots had a string of pop hits in the late 60s and early 70s with songs like Lovin’ Things, The River Is Wide, Midnight Confessions, Wait a Million Years, Temptation Eyes, Two Divided By Love, and Sooner or Later.
“Let’s Live for Today” was just one of the hits that so many people know by heart.
Part 2. Pachinko
Earlier this year, the TV show Pachinko — based on the best-seller novel by Min Jin Lee — was released on Apple TV+. The opening sequence to the show used the song — you guessed it — “Let’s Live for Today” for the opening theme.
By the way, even as a standalone, the opening sequence here is outstanding. The video, the dancing, the editing, the synchronization with the music — every bit of it.
When you tie the video and the energy of the music together with (1) the “living for today” meaning of the song; (2) the challenges that Koreans and Korean families faced from the late 1800s into the late 1900s in Japan; and (3) the sense that the Korean characters in the show are finding and creating joy and life wherever they can, despite those challenges . . . well, that makes the song an even better fit.
Everything in this opening sequence comes together perfectly. Watch it all the way through.
Part 3. Pachinko, Season 1, Episode 8. The season finale.
For the last episode of the season there was a Korean version of the song in the opening trailer instead of the Grass Roots version of “Let’s Live for Today.”
Actually, a Korean reimagining of the song is probably a better description. It has a unique sound to it.
Check it out, and see what you think.
Part 4. Leenalchi — an alternative pop band that fuses traditional Korean music with modern sounds.
After Pachinko’s first season finished up, I went back many times to watch the Korean version of the opening sequence. I really liked the sound of the music.
So I started wondering more about the group that had recorded this version.
The group is called “LEENALCHI” and a Korean-American friend tells me that the “L” at the beginning is silent, so it is pronounced “Eenalchi.” It is an alternative pop band that fuses traditional Korean music with modern sounds.
The song that they are probably best known for is called “Tiger Is Coming.” There are at least four or five live performances of it available on YouTube. I will include videos below for two of my favorites and then links for the rest.
Unless you’re already familiar with their music, you’ve probably never heard anything quite like this before.
LEENALCHI is without a doubt my favorite new band of the last few years. And “Tiger Is Coming” is my favorite new song for at least the past year, even though I don’t understand a single word of it! (…at least, not yet.)
This second performance (below) of “Tiger Is Coming” has a group of dancers called Ambiguous Dance Company performing on stage with LEENALCHI.
The dancers are seriously talented, and their performance meshes and melds perfectly with LEENALCHI and their music.
The dancing takes the performance up at least one level from the already-impressive live performance by LEENALCHI in the above video.
Watch this one all the way through, too.
If this song resonates with you, here are another two live performances of the song that you will probably also enjoy:
- (english subtitles) [Club.KOM] LEENALCHI (이날치) & Tiger is Coming (범 내려온다)
- My goodness. I’ve never seen this in real life (2 Days & 1 Night Season 4) | KBS WORLD TV 210103 (Check out the near-acrobatic moves at about the 1:11 mark.)
Part 5. The Italian connection to “Let’s Live for Today”
It turns out that “Let’s Live for Today” was not originally a Grass Roots song.
The Grass Roots’ version was actually a cover version of an Italian song called “Piangi Con Me” sung by an English band The Rokes in 1966.
Part 6. Yet more cover versions . . . and the best one of all . . . by Angelica Cacciapaglia.
Once I knew that there were more cover versions of Piangi Con Me, I started exploring to find which ones sounded good to me. There are a lot out there — just do a search for “Piangi Con Me” on Spotify.
One in particular stood out for me, and that is this cover version by Angelica Cacciapaglia from 2007.
I could listen to Angelica sing this enchanting bossa nova version of the song all day long.
Think about the musical journey here.
I started off back in 1967 with the original version of “Let’s Live for Today” by the Grass Roots.
The second step of this journey was 55 years later in the spring of 2022 with the opening sequence of Pachinko, a hit TV show telling the story of a Korean family across the length of the 20th century as they struggled in Japan to survive and ultimately to thrive.
The third step of the journey took me — unsurprisingly — into a Korean version of “Let’s Live for Today.” And pulling on that thread took me to the Korean fusion group, LEENALCHI and their hit song “Tiger Is Coming” for the fourth step of this musical journey.
Taking one more look at the original Grass Roots song let me to an unexpected discovery — the original version of the song was Italian, “Piangi Con Me” by The Rokes back in 1966.
And then the final step was yet another cover version of “Piangi Con Me,” this time by Angelica Cacciapaglia in 2007.
Forward in time 55 years, back in time 56 years, forward again 41 years . . . and across three different continents.
It’s a rare song that takes you so unexpectedly around the world and across a century’s worth of time travel!
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Related articles include:
• Ai Ninomiya’s 12 Best Japanese and English Cover Song Performances • The Marketing Innovation a 70s Rock Band Used to Score Their Only Hit Song • Tokyo or Cincinnati — Which City Is More Affordable for a Vacation? (Airfares • Hotels • Ground Transportation)
Recent articles:
• Why Are Fundamental Human Values Critically Important for Successful, Enduring Brands? • The 2 Reasons Populations Are Collapsing in Developed Countries • 3 Key Facts Everyone Is Missing About Biden’s Student Loan Debt Relief • Should It Be Up to Our Kids to Win the War Against Climate Change?
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