Sunny Hill featuring Hareem – Darling of All Hearts

Julyssa and I didn’t take too well to this single when it was launched. But I’ve reconsidered my position. When reading comments on Sunny Hill, you’ll often run into the “I miss old Sunny Hill” followed by the replies of older fans- “This IS the old Sunny Hill.”

Visually, of course, the group has changed. Janghyun has been absent since his military service began, and won’t be due for Sunny Hill activities until 2014. In place of a “male figure” of sorts, the group has collaborated with Hareem, who apparently brought all these instruments of his to make Darling of All Hearts (만인의 연인) an amalgam of folksy dance pop with dashes of polka- and I sense some Irish punch.

And let’s not mistake Sunny Hill’s cutesy pink polka dot image in the music video, because with lyrics by Kim Eana, the themes in Darling of All Hearts makes being single FREAKING FINE! I mean, it takes a while to actually get there, but it does get there with “being single is a little bit lonely, but it’s not sad.” In pop music (and everything that charts including rock), talks of being in love or brokenhearted is so predominant that saying “being single is fine” is ground-breaking.

Darling of All Hearts in included in Sunny Hill’s third EP titled Young Folk, which is readily available for purchase on iTunes.