Released March 7, 2012 Length 3:51 | Format CD
Digital download Label YG Entertainment | |
Genre Electro, hip house, techno Writer(s) G-Dragon, T.O.P (Korean)
G-Dragon, Verbal (Japanese) | ||
"Fantastic Baby" is a 2012 single by the K-Pop group Big Bang. It was released as the third single from their extended play Alive in February 2012. The song is known for being "one of the biggest K-pop hits ever" and its music video is the most-watched by a K-pop group in YouTube. With cumulative sales of over 6 million copies, it is one of the best-selling digital singles of all-time.
Contents
Background
"Fantastic Baby" was release as a single in March of 2012. A teaser of the music video was released on the music show Inkigayo on March 4, 2012 and the full video was published on YouTube two days later. The first performance of the song was made in their concert Big Show 2012 in Seoul. A Japanese-language version was released in March, on the Japanese version of Alive. The song was translated by the Korean-Japanese member of M-Flo, Verbal. This version was also included in the 2014 greatest hits album The Best of Big Bang 2006-2014.
Music video
Praised for being a "visual stunner," the video was directed by Seo Hyun-Seung. The video's theme is "the fight for the freedom." The members are seen wearing powerful fashion statements, such as futuristic helmets, metal shoulder embellishments and jewelled crowns, wearing dark make-up and are sporting unique hairstyles. The background dancers act as "rebels colliding with oppressors," wearing masks in stylish sets containing wreckage, spraying wires and waves of smoke, and dancing saja-nori (Korean lion dance). Big Bang released a Japanese version of the music video focused on the group’s scenes while they are in a warehouse setting. Some individual scenes were removed and there are no extras in this version.
Reception
It was one of YouTube's most viewed K-pop music videos in 2012 and was featured in the British newspaper The Guardian. Kevin Perry from the British music publication NME wrote that "Fantastic Baby" features the boy band wearing Fancy costumes and embracing riot chic. He also mentions about the “Boom Shakalaka” refrain that reminds the listener of music from Sly and The Family Stone. The Daily Telegraph recommended its readers to "try Fantastic Baby by the boyband Big Bang, whose video rivals Lady Gaga for fashionista eccentricity and excess." The Vancouver Sun wrote "Fantastic Baby is easily one of the most colourfully twisted pop videos we’ve seen in a while, combining RPG style art, riot gear, steampunk elements and street pop swagger." The music video for "Fantastic Baby" won the World Music Awards for "Video of the Year" and the MTV Video Music Awards Japan for "Best Dance Video."
Impact
"Fantastic Baby" was featured in the tv show Glee and included in the trailer for the movie Pitch Perfect 2, which was described as a "win for Korean music that has seemingly penetrated yet another tradicional media source." The members' look in the music video, especially G-Dragon's long red-streaked side hair, have been parodied several times, including by Running Man cast members and by Dynamic Duo. Arirang TV news considers the song as part of Big Bang's "mega hits". Billboard recognized that “'Fantastic Baby' was the first song to cross international boundaries with it’s then-groundbreaking EDM style" and praised the song for being "nothing short of fantastic". Sun-Times placed the track in their unranked list of ten best Big Bang songs, calling it a "quintessential K-Pop song." Rolling Stone stated that "this instantly accessible single from K-Pop phenomenon Big Bang blew off many doors of American crossover with little effort on the band's part" and added "this modern-day essential showcases K-pop's genre-bending, visually-oriented charms."
As of March 2014, the official music video for "Fantastic Baby" on YouTube surpassed 100 million views, making it the fourth Korean video to do so, after PSY's Gangnam Style and Gentleman, and Girls' Generation's Gee, and the first by a boy band. In 2016, the music video became the first from a K-Pop group to reach 200 million views and later the song became the first Korean group music video to surpass one million likes on YouTube.
Commercial performance
After four days from releasing the album, the song debuted at number four in the Gaon Digital Chart, charting behind Big Bang's songs "Blue," "Bad Boy" and "Love Dust", selling 450,021 copies. In the next week, the song rose to number three, selling 362,298 copies. The single was the best-selling song of March 2012, reaching 1,351,429 downloads and charting first in the Digital Chart for the month. The song was the fifth best selling single of the year, selling 3,339,871 copies in South Korea. As of September 2016, Fantastic Baby reached 4 million downloads in South Korea, the best-selling boy group song on Gaon Chart.
Fantastic Baby is the longest charting kpop group song on Billboard's World Digital Songs, spending over 100 weeks on chart.
In September 2012, the song was certified gold by the RIAJ for PC downloads, one of only two K-Pop songs to achieve this in Japan in 2012. In December 2013, the song was certified platinum. Fantastic Baby charted for over 70 weeks on the Japan Hot 100.
"Fantastic Baby" has sold over 1.4 million downloads on Chinese download service KuGou.
As of January 2017, the song has sold over 6,1 million downloads in South Korea, China and Japan alone.