Thank You (Eighteen Again)

Paul Kim's particular gift for making gratitude sound like longing, or longing sound like peace, made him ideal for a drama about a man who gets to see his life from outside himself. "Thank You" operates in this emotional territory: the particular feeling of being grateful for something while simultaneously grieving its impermanence. The production is Paul Kim's characteristic warmth — acoustic guitar, piano, voice in the foreground without apology. His voice has matured into itself here, the slight roughness that was always present having deepened into something that carries more texture and therefore more emotional information. The song understands that genuine gratitude is complicated — that "thank you" can mean "I love you" and "I'm sorry" and "I don't want this to end" simultaneously. Paul Kim sings as if practicing saying goodbye before he has to, getting acquainted with the grief in advance. For the drama this is thematically perfect; as a standalone it speaks to anyone who has become aware, too late, of what they have while they still have it, the recognition arriving just before the loss.