Hello! I posted my suggestions a while back but they got deleted after the site's renovation, so here they are again. It took me a while to type them back up, but here they are.

1. MAMAMOO “Memory (그리고 그리고 그려봐)”; CATS “Memory”

- These two songs share the same title, but they are actually very different in content. The former I would actually have paired with Don McLean’s “Vincent” had you not introduced it already in Parallel Universe. It’s a swing jazz ballad that talks about love through the metaphor of painting. The protagonist recounts various pieces of memories she has had throughout the year with her lover, comparing them to colors staining the canvas that is their relationship.

- I actually found out about the latter years ago when you sang it on TV. This immortal song also has a protagonist looking back through her memories—but Grizabella is far from happy. Old and weak, she is neither beautiful nor loved. Nonetheless, she still retains a glimmer of hope as she sings about how “when the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too / and a new day will begin”.

2. 김범수 “보고 싶다”; Stromae “Papaoutai”

- I don’t know if the term can be applied to non-poetic passages, but if it can, these two songs are both apostrophes: the speaker/narrator speaks directly to the person he misses. The former is dedicated to the speaker’s ex-lover, while the latter is dedicated to his missing father. I’m sure you know the former so if I may elaborate on the latter, it’s by the Belgian singer Stromae, who lost his own father in the Rwandan genocide. “Papaoutai” is essentially the phrase “Papa où t’es”, or “Where are you Dad?”, spelled phonetically (as if a small child would misspell it). The speaker repeatedly asks this question, and as the song escalates, so do his emotions. The song’s particularly powerful when he starts lashing out in the second verse. Roughly translated, it reads: “One day or another, we’ll all be fathers / and one day or another, we’ll all have disappeared … Tell us, who gives birth to irresponsible people? / Everyone knows how to make babies, but no one knows how to be a father … Tell us where you’re hiding; we must have counted our fingers at least a thousand times”

3. Lena Park “달아요”; Maroon 5 “Sugar”

- Similar titles. Both protagonists talk about how “sweet” his/her lover is.

4. Lena Park “미아”; The Script “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”

- Both songs revolve around the motif of a “street”. They both feature protagonists who broke up with their lovers and return to the street that is so full of memories. The former’s protagonist is a “lost child” trying to navigate her way through an endless “labyrinth”, as she has to avoid all the paths she once took with her ex-lover, for memories of his calling her name and running towards her won’t leave her alone. The latter’s protagonist camps in the corner of the street where he first saw his ex-lover and where they used to meet all the time. He’s still deeply in love; he stays, regardless of what people say about him, for if “one day you wake up and find that you’re missing me / And your heart starts to wonder where on this earth I could be / Thinking maybe you’ll come back here to the place that we’d meet / And you’ll see me waiting for you on the corner of the street / So I’m not moving”.

5.  Sung Si Kyung (Duet with Lena Park) “우린 참 좋았는데”; The Chainsmokers (ft. Halsey) “Closer”

- In my mind, these songs are two parts of the same story. Both feature two protagonists who have broken up with each other, but miss each other very badly. The first song is full of wistful yearning; it talks about how much the protagonists miss having a shoulder to lean on at the end of a long day, or talking to each other on the phone to say good night. They regret their decision to break up, as they wish to go back to the time when “[they] were so happy together”. They eventually confess that “if you show up just once, if I run into you again—I think I’ll forget all my fears and embrace you”. “Closer” is what happens once this couple is indeed reunited. They haven’t talked to each other since they broke each other’s heart four years ago and yet they serendipitously run into each other in a hotel bar. They are both struck at how good they both look (“I forget just why I left you, I was insane”), and the nostalgia they’ve repressed so far lead up to a passionate catharsis as the protagonists yield to their feelings and embrace (etc.) each other.

6. MAMAMOO (ft. 정기고) “Friday Night”; Katy Perry “Last Friday Night”

- Obvious link in the title, but they’re very different songs. The former is about falling for each other on Friday night—the protagonists see each other, and boom, it’s on. They wonder about how they should act, and their stanzas/passages closely mirror each other’s (everything’s the same, except for small changes depending on the protagonist’s gender). The latter talks about wild, wild partying on Friday night. Everything’s a mess but the protagonist is far from regretting her choice—no, she declares that she’ll “do it all again” this Friday night. This song, along with High School Musical, is why I thought high school would be such a blast back in middle school. Couldn’t be further from the truth.

7. MAMAMOO “너나 해 (Egotistic)”; Ariana Grande “Problem”

- Both songs feature protagonists who were in a very one-sided, unreciprocated relationship. The protagonist’s now ex-lover is the stereotypical bad boy/homme fatale, who only thinks about himself and is nothing but a problem for her, BUT who is also dreadfully attractive so that she can’t leave him. The former delivers a powerful goodbye to the bad boy, declaring that she will no longer crumble in his absence and that she is tired of saying “that’s okay” and that she is “ready to go on [her] way”. The latter takes longer to reach that stage, as she admits that “even though I can’t forgive you / I really want to / I want you”, or that “Every time you touch me / And say you love me / I get a little bit breathless / I shouldn’t want it / But it’s you”. In the rap verse though, she finally reaches the conclusion is that “the best thing now / Is probably for you to exit” and says goodbye.

8. MAMAMOO “Decalcomanie”; Ariana Grande “Side to Side”

- This one might be a little R-rated, so I won’t be shocked if you don’t air this one. They essentially both talk about an instinctive attraction to “you” and the aftermath of spending the night together. No more explanation needed. The former has some beautiful lyrics though, as they compare both the physical and spiritual image of their being together to decalcomania with their being smudged onto each other.