Chen's Best Luck and the lasting pull of It's Okay, That's Love
In the autumn of 2014, EXO's main vocalist stepped outside the group's tight choreography to deliver a slow, piano-led ballad for one of South Korea's quietly devastating dramas. Chen's "Best Luck" arrived just as viewers in Sydney and Melbourne settled in for late-night drama marathons, and that timing shaped how Australian listeners would come to love the track.
"It's Okay, That's Love" told the story of a mystery novelist and a psychiatrist, both wounded by their pasts, finding each other through honesty and patience. The drama asked hard questions about mental health long before such themes became regular fixtures on prime-time Korean television. Chen's voice arrived in the middle of those questions, offering a melody that felt less like a soundtrack and more like an internal monologue.
The song itself is built on restraint. A repeating piano motif carries the verses, and Chen holds back where many pop vocalists would push. Australian EXO-Ls who discovered the ballad through SBS PopAsia or through friends in Brisbane fan groups often describe the first listen as something close to recognition, as if the song already knew what they were feeling.
Years on, "Best Luck" still surfaces in quiet moments. It plays on playlists curated for rainy commutes along the Sydney Harbour Bridge, gets requested at birthday gatherings in Adelaide, and sits near the top of many a Melbournian's "EXO comfort" list. The reason for that staying power lies somewhere between the drama, the singer, and the listener, leaning gently toward each other.
A ballad shaped for late Australian evenings
The Korean drama aired from July to September 2014, with "Best Luck" released as part of the official OST in late August. In Australia, that window lined up with winter evenings, when fans tuning in via streaming platforms or fan-subbed uploads often watched alone or in small groups. The mood of the song, reflective, gentle, almost apologetic in tone, suited that intimacy.
Chen wrote the track alongside a small team of Korean songwriters, including a composer known for shaping K-drama ballads in that era. The lyrics describe someone watching a lover walk away and wishing them well, even when wishing feels impossible. Australian fans who followed the drama's twists often pointed out that the line about letting go fit both the on-screen couple and personal breakups playing out in their own lives.
The recording leans on breathy verses and a chorus that opens like a window. Strings enter halfway through the second verse and never leave. Chen's voice stays centred, almost conversation-like. For listeners used to EXO's layered production, that directness lands differently. It asks for stillness.
Inside the recording and the lyrical mood
Chen approached the studio sessions for "Best Luck" with the same vocal control he had shown in earlier EXO ballad work, but the framing here was new. The song was meant to feel like a confession rather than a performance, and the producers kept the booth recording warm and close. The result is a vocal that sits low in the mix during the verses and rises only slightly for the chorus.
Korean music writers at the time noted his careful handling of register shifts, particularly into falsetto during the bridge. Australian music students in Melbourne who study K-pop vocal technique often point to this track as a clear example of restraint shaping emotional impact. The bridge is short, less than thirty seconds, but it changes how the final chorus feels.
Lyrically, the song does not attempt to resolve anything. It accepts that some relationships end without closure and asks only that the listener wishes the other person well. That openness has made the track portable across contexts, from long-distance breakups among international fans to friendships that quietly drifted apart across Australian cities.
Where the song sits among EXO member solo OSTs
Among EXO members' solo OST contributions, "Best Luck" holds an early place in a catalogue that has continued to grow. Comparing his major solo OST releases helps show how the singer approached each project differently.
| Song title | Year | Drama | Co-artist | Arrangement feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best Luck | 2014 | It's Okay, That's Love | Solo | Minimal piano, soft strings |
| Everytime | 2016 | Descendants of the Sun | Punch | Duet build, layered chorus |
| I Don't Even Know | 2017 | Argon | Solo | Acoustic guitar, room tone |
| Cherry Blossom | 2024 | Welcome to Samdalri | Solo | Strings, reflective pacing |
| Maybe | 2025 | Unreleased drama project | Solo | Whispered verses, sparse beats |
The earliest entry is also the quietest. "Best Luck" does not try to overwhelm; it tries to sit beside the listener. That approach sets it apart from later work, where arrangements and duet partners take larger roles. The track's place in the wider EXO OST canon has only grown with time, as newer fans seek out the songs that shaped earlier phases of the group's history.
Themes that loop back to the drama
"It's Okay, That's Love" treated mental health, trauma, and recovery with a sincerity that felt new for Korean television at the time. Jo In-sung's character wrote novels as a way of metabolising his own past, and Gong Hyo-jin's character taught him that healing could include another person. The drama never pretended these issues were simple.
"Best Luck" echoes that refusal to simplify. The narrator is not demanding reconciliation but wishing someone well from a distance, accepting that love sometimes ends without bitterness. Australian viewers who watched the final episodes in late 2014 often said the song captured the feeling of the drama's closing montage better than any dialogue could.
That alignment is part of why the track continues to circulate in fan spaces. It is tied to a specific narrative, but it travels with anyone who has had to let someone go. EXO-Ls in Perth have described playing it at the end of long friendships; in Brisbane, fans have used it at memorial moments for personal losses. That openness makes it useful in moments the drama never intended.
Chen's growth as a vocalist around this release
In 2014, Chen was already known within EXO for a tone that could move from breathy whispers to powerful belts without sounding strained. Songs like "Best Luck" showed what he could do when that power was held in reserve. His phrasing on the chorus leans on small pauses, the kind of choices that require a singer to trust the silence around them.
Korean vocal analysts at the time noted his careful control of his head voice and the way he approached the bridge as quiet negotiation rather than showmanship. Australian music students in Melbourne who follow K-pop vocal technique have sometimes used his recordings from this era as study material, particularly the clean transitions between registers.
That vocal approach carried into later EXO solo work, including the ballad-heavy "Lights Out" and his role in ballad collaborations after his return from the military. The seeds of that mature sound are visible in the arrangement choices made for "Best Luck" almost a decade earlier.
How Australian fans kept the song circulating
Australian EXO-L chapters in Melbourne and Sydney hosted small listening nights in 2014 and 2015 that often included "Best Luck" as a centrepiece. Some of those events were organised through fan meet-up groups on social platforms, others through university clubs in Brisbane and Perth catering to broader Korean culture interests.
SBS PopAsia continued to feature the track on rotation for years, and the song appeared on Australian-made K-ballad playlists on Spotify and Apple Music. ARIA's K-pop charting category still surfaces older OST tracks when anniversary moments trigger streaming spikes.
Fan-made lyric videos and piano covers uploaded from Adelaide and Brisbane kept the song visible on YouTube long after the drama left public attention. Those covers, often posted by music students or hobbyist pianists, helped introduce the song to newer EXO fans who had joined the fandom through later comebacks.
Listening recommendations for Australian EXO-Ls
- Stream "Best Luck" on Spotify or Apple Music and pair it with the full "It's Okay, That's Love" OST for context.
- Add the track to a slow-evening playlist used for Sunday resets or rainy drives along Sydney's coastline.
- Watch a fan-uploaded piano cover on YouTube, then the official lyric video, to hear how arrangement choices shape the song's mood.
- Revisit the final episode of "It's Okay, That's Love" with subtitles; many Australian fans describe the closing montage as a different experience when the song plays underneath.
- Check SBS PopAsia's archived playlists, which occasionally resurface older Korean drama OSTs alongside current releases.
- Follow Melbourne and Sydney EXO-L meet-up pages, where listening nights sometimes focus on early ballad-era solo work from group members.
For more Chen coverage, early-EXO retrospectives, and updates on upcoming solo projects from EXO members, bookmark EXO-L and turn on notifications so nothing from the group's archive slips past you.