30-sec preview
2023 · From the album Shining Star
It's You (feat. NO:EL)
by Han Yo Han
The reading
A love letter written from the wreckage of addiction, where the addressed woman is both the reason to keep drinking and the only reason to try to stop
02 · Interpretation
Han Yo Han's 'It's You': A Love Song From the Bottom of the Glass
The song opens like a bar order. The narrator waves off concern, tells someone to pour another drink, mumbles that there are plenty of women in the world, and then, almost as a slip of the tongue, admits the opposite: after years of living like this, she is still his reason. That contradiction is the whole engine of 'It's You.' The chorus insists on a single addressee while the verses circle every distraction that has failed to replace her.
Han Yo Han's first verse is a resignation letter dressed as a farewell. He knows she knows him too well to accept the standard breakup script; the line about telling her to find a better man is dismissed as a con that will not land. What he asks for instead is small and specific: one tight hug, then goodbye. The lyric that follows, admitting he loved her, arrives in the past tense, as if he is already narrating the relationship from a distance he has not actually reached.
The middle section sharpens the self-portrait. A few days of happiness cost hundreds in bar tabs. Because of her, he says, he cut a scar into someone else's heart, presumably a rebound who never had a chance. The more he tries to move on, the more pathetic he feels. Instead of the cliche of missing her, he asks only that she pick up the phone once and tell him to pull himself together, calling him 'jagiya.' It is a request for a specific sentence in a specific voice, which is a more honest version of longing than any grand declaration.
NO:EL's verse: the pharmacy and the graveyard
NO:EL enters with the chemical inventory: Xanax, cigarettes, more liquor, nights blurring into mornings with strangers he no longer wants. The imagery of iron bars and a single beam of light casts the addressee as the one visitor to a self-imposed prison. He goes further, describing himself as unworthy of being human, watched over in a grave by the woman he is addressing. The register is theatrical, but the underlying claim is plain: she stayed while he was at his worst, and he has not figured out how to repay that except by writing this.
His serenade proposes escape. If tomorrow were the last day, he would pick her. Leave Seoul, find a house where no one is watching, forget reputation and money because there is enough of both. Then the verse pivots into something more clinical. He describes mood swings that used to lurch up and down and are now more level, medication folded away in a drawer, sobriety becoming familiar to someone who calls himself a hardhead. The friends stuck in the old life are many; his way of saying goodbye to them is to tell her he loves her and mean it. The love song and the recovery narrative are the same document.
Why the contradiction works
What gives 'It's You' its charge is the refusal to resolve. Han Yo Han's hook insists she is the reason, but the verses keep showing him ordering another drink, burning money, hurting bystanders. NO:EL's verse claims he is coming out of it, then admits he would still drop everything and disappear with her tomorrow. Neither singer pretends the woman is a cure. She is the argument they use against themselves when the argument for giving up is winning.
Released in June 2023 on 'Shining Star,' the track sits in a Korean hip-hop lane where confessional writing about substances and relationships has become common currency, but its specificity, the phone call, the bar tab, the drawer of pills, keeps it from collapsing into genre. It endures, to the extent it does, because it treats a love song as something you write when you have run out of other options.
Themes catalogued
03 · Lyrics
"It's You (feat. NO:EL)"
It's you
It's you
It's you
It's you
Yeah, 됐어, 술이나 따라 줘
세상에 여잔 많아, 걱정은 하지 말고
1년 아니, 아마 몇 년을 이따위 모습으로 살아가도
It's you, 내 이유
너 말곤 성에 안 차더라
너는 나를 너무 잘 알아
더 나은 사람 만나란 말도 안 되는 소리
안 먹히는 것도 알아
그냥 날 한번 꽉 안고선 bye
Tell me why
있잖아, 널 사랑했더라고
며칠은 행복했을걸, 술값에 몇 백을 쓰고
너라는 여자때매 다른 누군가의 마음에 상처를 새겼어
이럴수록 내가 더 비참해지더라고
우린 서로 너무 잘 알아
보고 싶다는 그런 뻔한 소리 안 할 테니
그냥 한 번만 전화를 받아
'정신 차려 자기야' 라고 해줘
It's you, 널 사랑했더라고
It's you
It's you
It's you
널 사랑했더라고
Xanny on my head, penid on my fuckin nose
Cigarttes, 내 입술 사이로
또 술 들이붓던 매일
너와 함께했던 기억 흐릿해
마치 어제 만난 new bitches groupies, no thotties anymore
어둡기만 했던 쇠창살 그 사이로
넌 내 희망 한줄기 빛이었으니까
지난 1년은 묻어두기로 하자, my baby, oh
인간이 될 자격도 없던 날 무덤에서 홀로
외로이 지켜주었던 너의 모습에 뜨거운 눈물이 흘러
It's serenade for you
내일이 세상의 마지막 날이라면
너를 선택할래, 내 사람, It's you
어디든지 숨어버리면 돼, 떠나자
이 서울 너와 내겐 필요하지, 눈들이 없는 집이
명예 명분 따윈 fuck it, 돈 비슷한 거 충분
지레 겁먹지 말아, I got you bae, you feel me
혼란스럽기만 한 세상이지만 너의 웃음이
나에겐 전부니까 내 현실은 다시 ain't goin' crazy 혹, 또는 Trippy
Mood swings go like 비슷비슷해
이제는 없는데 아래위로 요동치는 혼돈에 대해
나 약봉지들은 접어 서랍 안에 stay
나아지는 하루 이틀이 매일 같애
악몽들은 두고 나와 이제 부딪힐래
다시 돌아가긴 싫어, 꼴통으론 Sober가 익숙해
머물러 있는 친구들은 부지기수네
But I love you so much, and I mean that
며칠은 행복했을걸, 술값에 몇 백을 쓰고
너라는 여자때매 다른 누군가의 마음에 상처를 새겼어
이럴수록 내가 더 비참해지더라고
우린 서로 너무 잘 알아
보고 싶다는 그런 뻔한 소리 안 할 테니
그냥 한 번만 전화를 받아
'정신 차려 자기야' 라고 해줘
It's you, 널 사랑했더라고
It's you
It's you
It's you
널 사랑했더라고
Lyrics via Google. Copyright belongs to rights holders.
04 · FAQ