Bae Bae
Big Bang's sexually suggestive single from the Made album.
Bae Bae is a song by South Korean boy band Big Bang, released as a digital single on May 1, 2015, through YG Entertainment. It served as one of eight lead singles from the band's third Korean-language studio album Made (2016) and was initially included on the single album M alongside Loser. The track marked Big Bang's first release in three years, since Still Alive in June 2012.
Quick Facts
- Language
- Korean
- Artist
- BigBang
- Album
- Made
- Released
- 1 May 2015
- Genre
- Trap
- hip-hop
- R&B
- Writer
- G-Dragon; Teddy Park
- Producer
- Teddy
- G-Dragon
- T.O.P
Facts from the source article.
Background and composition
YG Entertainment announced the title tracks for the MADE Series: M in the third teaser, including Loser and Bae Bae. The song is a trap-infected hip-hop/R&B piece in the style of country music, noted for its boundary-pushing elements and sexual references, with instrumentation from guitar. G-Dragon stated that the song was inspired by the work of British artist Francis Bacon, whose paintings he found strangely erotic while visiting a museum.
Critical reception
Billboard ranked Bae Bae at number fifteen on its 20 Best K-Pop Songs of 2015 list, while Dazed placed it at number eight, describing it as a playful wander through young love with a bouncing, energetic flow from G-Dragon and T.O.P and smoothed-out vocals from Taeyang, Daesung and Seungri. Korean online magazine IZM named it one of the best singles of the year, praising its confidence and shameless beat. The Chicago Sun-Times included the track in an unranked list of ten best Big Bang songs. In a survey by The Dong-a Ilbo, Bae Bae was chosen as the fifth best male idol song in the past 20 years. The song won Song of the Year at the 2016 Korean Music Awards and was nominated for Best Rap/Hip-Hop Song.
Commercial performance
With only two days in the tracking week, Bae Bae debuted at number two on the Gaon Download Chart with 217,594 sales, number three on the Digital Chart, and number 15 on the Streaming Chart. It rose to number two on the Digital and Streaming Chart in its second week and sold 828,966 copies in two months. By year-end, the single sold 1,421,715 digital units, making it the seventh most downloaded single in South Korea in 2015. It debuted at number two on Billboard's World Digital Songs chart, behind Loser. The music video was the fourth most viewed K-pop video in the U.S. and worldwide for April. In Taiwan, it ranked eighth among the most popular Korean singles of 2015 on KKBOX, and in Hong Kong it was one of the ten best-selling songs of 2015, receiving a digital award from RTHK.
Music video
The music video was directed by Seo Hyun-seung, who previously directed Fantastic Baby. It includes various erotic yet not explicit references, deemed rather risque for K-pop standards. The video opens with G-Dragon rubbing female mannequins, continues with Taeyang dressed as a cowboy, and features T.O.P cosplaying as the Joker while symbolically ejaculating with a syringe. Daesung gets hot and heavy with love interests, and Seungri appears as a Christian Grey-esque sugar daddy. The five members unite on the moon with models dressed as Disney princesses. Billboard called it one of the most sexual K-pop videos from a male group. Bae Bae won Best Music Video at the 2015 Mnet Asian Music Awards.
More in Songs & Singles
Elsewhere in NewJeans
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced