idle() the music of ipe()

No. 31· behind-the-music

Counting "Slowly" in Ten Songs

"Slow" or "slowly" appears 21 times in the English sheets of dear(you); vol.1 and 천천히 20 times in the Korean ones. Two songs show where the word is missing.

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The album is slow in its tempos, between 64 and 74 BPM, and slow in its titles. Song 02 is "It's Okay, Take Your Time." So we might expect the word "slowly" to be everywhere in the lyrics. This post counts it in the lyric sheets of all ten songs, and finds two places where it is not.

The scope and method first. We read the lyric sheets in the ten song design documents, the English version and the Korean version of each. The documents were written on 2026-07-04 when the songs were commissioned, so what is sung may differ, and we did not check the counts against the audio. Whispered lines in the other language are not counted here, which matters because Whispers in the Other Language counts 천천히 among the whispers. Titles are not counted. In English we counted "slow" and "slowly" as whole words, which includes "a little slow". In Korean we counted 천천히. The music is made with AI (Suno); the lyrics are drafted by AI and reviewed by a person.

The counts

SongEnglish "slow(ly)"Korean 천천히
0134
0202
0343
0410
0553
0611
0711
0811
0922
1033
Total2120

The middle of the album is quiet about it: songs 06, 07 and 08 have exactly one use in each language, and 09 has two. The word is thickest in song 05, "It's Okay to Rest a While.", with five in English, and in song 01, with four in Korean.

Two songs where one version leaves it out

Song 02 has no "slow" in English at all. Its title carries the idea in Korean as 천천히 말해봐, and the Korean sheet says 「천천히 말해봐.」 twice, in Verse 1 and in the Chorus. The English sheet says "Take your time and tell me." in the same places, so the meaning is kept and the word is not. Ten Titles, Read as Sentences notes the same thing for the English title.

Song 04 goes the other way. Its English Bridge has "It's okay to be a little slow.", and the Korean sheet has no 천천히 at all: the Bridge says 「조금 느려도 괜찮아.」, using 느려도 ("even if slow") instead. So the English version of song 04 uses the word once, and the Korean version uses a different word for the same idea.

The one-word line

Two songs close with the word standing alone. In song 03 the English Outro ends "Tomorrow, too — / slowly." and the Korean Outro ends 「내일도 / 천천히.」 In song 06 the Outro says "Slowly." and 「천천히.」, and then continues with "Little by little." and "Together." (in Korean 조금씩, 함께). So in both songs the word is a line by itself, and in both it follows "tomorrow". In each case the whispered ipe. be still comes after it.

The word as a request

Across the album, "slowly" is used for a few different things. It describes a heart wearing out in song 01 ("your heart was slowly wearing thin"), and a few lines later it is something to do together: "breathe, slowly, with me." In song 05 it describes the rain ("the rain is falling slowly") and then the end of work ("slowly close the laptop?"). In songs 03 and 08 the sentence is a permission: "It's okay to come slowly." In song 07 the object is a smile: "One smile, offered slowly." In song 09 it appears next to the album's other small word: "to smile a little slowly?" The last song gives it to sleep and breath: "are slowly falling asleep," "breathe slowly," and "Let's meet slowly".

What we are not claiming

  • That the word was spread this way on purpose. The design documents do not say so.
  • That the sung lyrics match the sheets. The counts come from the 2026-07-04 design documents, not the audio.
  • That a slow word makes a song slow. We counted a word and did not measure a tempo from it.
  • Anything about how a listener will feel. No medical or other effect is claimed.

Listen

Once more, plainly: the music is made with AI (Suno); the lyrics are drafted by AI and reviewed by a person. You can also listen on the idle() home page.

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