On January 5th a split digital single called I’m 21 was released in honor of Yoon Il Sang‘s 21st anniversary in the music industry. It features the unlikely combination of popular acoustic duo 10cm and Britain’s Got Talent tenor phenomenon Paul Potts, each performing songs crafted by Yoon Il Sang. 10cm make a new song out of old Cool hit “애상” whereas Paul Potts get to sing “I’m Missing You”, an English version of Kim Bum Soo‘s 보고 싶다.

Look below the jump for a joint music video, some Yoon Il Sang background history and 90’s k-pop recommendations.

In spite of his many years in the industry Yoon Il Sang may be an unfamiliar name to most as he’s primarily been active as a songwriter and producer. He released his first solo album in 1997 and followed it up with another album in 2002. A few years back he formed the project unit PDiS together with Cho PD for a joint album but at no point did he reach the same success on his own as his productions for other artists did.

The first works of Yoon Il Sang were “Oh, Boy” and “쿡쿡 (집없는 아이)” from 1992, performed by Park Jun Hee and included on her second full length album. After that the man spent the 90’s pouring out one hit after another, including many of my own personal 90’s favorites such as Turbo‘s “Love Is…” and “회상“; Goofy‘s “비련“; “Young Turks Club‘s “정” and “타인“; Cool’s 운명“; R.ef‘s “Never Ending Story“; SechsKies‘ “무모한 사랑“; Yoo Seung Jun‘s “사랑해 누나“; and many, many more. Yoon Il Sang has remained active with an impressive body of work as a result.

It looks like the release of this single is the first taste of a complete Yoon Il Sang 21st Anniversary album so many more great covers are to be expected. A look at this congratulatory video may provide a hind on some of the artists to perform the upcoming songs:

Sources: Luminosity; Bugs Music; maniadb; Wikipedia