I Wanna Hear Your Song tells the story of a woman (Kim Se Jung) who suffers from nightmares and insomnia and can only go to sleep by hearing a person who is tone deaf sing. She meets a mysterious tone deaf pianist (Yeon Woo Jin) and tries to remember a murder as well as a past love that are lost in her memories.
Kim Se Jung plays Hong Yi Young who is a timpanist in an orchestra. She doesn’t remember a portion of her life, but nightmares and brief flashbacks about that time cause her insomnia. As questions arise about what happened to her, she begins to try to seek the truth.
Yeon Woo Jin is Jang Yoon. He’s a mysterious man who begins hanging around Yi Young and seems interested in her. The question is whether his interest is good or bad. He seems suspicious and his motives aren’t clear.
Then we have Song Jae Rim as Nam Joo Wan who is an arrogant orchestra conductor and Park Ji Yeon as Ha Eun Joo who is a violinist in the orchestra.
I Wanna Hear Your Song had some good stuff in it, but mostly it was disappointing and felt like it could have been so much more. It had all of the ingredients for an amazing series, but it just really didn’t put everything together.
It mixes darker suspense elements with romantic comedy elements in a musical setting. As someone who usually enjoys musical settings in stories, I was surprised that I wasn’t so interested in the music portion of the drama.
I didn’t really care for Yi Young’s career side of the story and didn’t like the supporting characters. In the opening episodes of the drama, the music stuff takes up a bigger part of the story, and it felt slow from the get go.
They then pepper in bits of the darker back story and the mystery surrounding Yi Young’s past as well as Jang Yoon’s interest in it. I was instantly drawn into these moments, and they kept me wanting to move forward and know more.
The drama did seem like it was trying a bit too hard to sell the mystery though. Everything related to it was made extra dramatic down to the tiniest reveal. And teeny, tiny reveals were a big part of this series.
In order to keep a lot of mystery, the show gives the audience crumbs of back story through flashbacks, nightmares, and memories. We aren’t made aware of how Yi Young is connected to the people she knows in the orchestra and just kind of have to go with it as the drama slowly reveals those details.
I think having so little information about everyone’s back story and connection dampened any reveals we had as the show progressed. These reveals were played up as very dramatic, but they just didn’t have a big impact. This slow delivery of key information also made things feel a bit draggy.
I’m someone who really likes mystery elements in a story, and I love it if a drama can pull off keeping some element of mystery all the way though. It’s okay to start off with a lot of mystery as a story is setting up, but the appropriate pacing of giving information to the audience throughout the story is key.
The drama did progress as the story was peeled back, but it sure did take its time. By the time we get halfway through the drama, we were just starting to put together some of what happened to Yi Young. Many things were left shrouded in mystery though and continued to leave a smaller impact because of a lack of context as to who characters were and how they were connected to events.
It’s a good thing I was genuinely interested in the mystery and what happened to Yi Young, because that interest allowed me push through the slower pace. But even then, I was not rewarded, and this drama just seemed to stall and struggle in the middle stretch. It became quite a chore to finish it.
The last quarter does pick up some and finally brings everything to a head as the truth is brought to light and things are dealt with. We find out what happened, everyone’s involvement, and how things end. It was kind of a too little too late situation for me though.
Now, on the plus side, I did really enjoy both Yeon Woo Jin and Kim Se Jung in this drama. I’ve previously enjoyed Yeon Woo Jin’s performances, and he was great here. This was my first time seeing Kim Se Jung, and she really was delightful and had a uniqueness that I quite liked.
The romance between this pairing was very complicated. Most of the time things were very serious between them, but there is humor to lighten things up, particularly in the earlier episodes when they are in the bickering phase.
Without getting too spoilery, at first we are just trying to figure out what the deal is with Jang Yoon, and then as we learn more, the romance potential gets very complicated between this pair. I like a good angsty and conflicted romance. It’s just too bad the overall dragginess of the show also bogged down the romance.
So I Wanna Hear Your Song left me feeling quite conflicted and a bit disappointed. It had so much going for it, but it just couldn’t seem to execute it. The intriguing mystery, complicated romance, solid actors, and wonderful OST kind of got shortchanged when it came to putting everything together. The drama has some things to like, but it really could have been so much more.
My Rating: 5.5/10
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