Gee (Girls' Generation song)

Did You Know?

• The music video for the Korean version features the members as mannequins coming to life after a male staff member leaves; it became the first girl-group video to reach 100 million views on YouTube.
• A parody called "Hee" combines the instrumental of "Gee" with dialogue from the drama Temptation of Wife.
• Super Junior regularly included a cover of "Gee" on their Super Show 2 tour, introduced by a comedic video interlude featuring both groups.

Background and release

SM Entertainment launched Girls' Generation in August 2007, and the group's debut album sold over 100,000 copies in South Korea. For their first extended play, released on January 5, 2009, SM initially planned to use a cover of Duffy's "Mercy" as the title track, inspired by the retro trend from Wonder Girls' "Nobody", but scrapped it due to copyright issues. Production duo E-Tribe pitched "Gee" to SM, who found the lyrics childish and the melody weak, but E-Tribe persisted and the song was selected as the title track. After domestic success, Girls' Generation signed with Universal Music Japan-owned Nayutawave Records in September 2010, and the Japanese version of "Gee" was released as their second Japanese single on October 20, 2010.

Music and lyrics

E-Tribe, consisting of Ahn Myung-won and Kim Young-deuk, wrote, arranged, and produced "Gee". The track is three minutes and 21 seconds long and features dense synthesizers described as glittering Shibuya-kei and influenced by techno, with chimes at the beginning and pulsing electropop beats. The group sings in high-registered vocals with electronic processing, demonstrating aegyo, and the lyrics address feelings of first love from a young female perspective.

Reception

Girls' Generation kicked off promotions for "Gee" with a performance on MBC's Music Core on January 10, 2009. The track became a massive success, spending nine straight weeks at number one on KBS's Music Bank and notching eight consecutive wins on Mnet's chart—a record at the time. Melon named it Song of the Decade, and Music Bank ranked it as the most popular song of 2009. It swept major awards, including Digital Daesang and Digital Bonsang at the 24th Golden Disc Awards, Daesang and Digital Music at the 19th Seoul Music Awards, and Song of the Year at the 7th Korean Music Awards. The Japanese version moved 130,145 physical copies in 2010, making it the 49th best-selling single of the year in Japan. It hit number one on the RIAJ's weekly digital track chart on October 26, and later ranked 57th and 23rd on Billboard's Japan Hot 100 for 2010 and 2011. In January 2014, the RIAJ certified it "Million" for surpassing one million digital downloads. As of May 2020, it remains the group's top-selling US single with 80,000 downloads.

Legacy

"Gee" is widely recognized as a K-pop classic and Girls' Generation's signature song. Its choreography, featuring a repeated pointing hook nicknamed the 'crab dance,' circulated widely, and the brightly colored skinny jeans worn in the video influenced South Korean fashion. Chris True selected it as an outstanding song in the group's AllMusic biography. Chuck Eddy ranked it fifth on his 2012 list of the 21 greatest K-pop songs, and Pitchfork's Jakob Dorof included it on his 2014 list of 20 essential K-pop songs, calling it the magnum opus of modern Korean bubblegum pop. Abigail Covington of The A.V. Club regarded Girls' Generation as K-pop's premier provider, particularly with "Gee". Billboard called it arguably the most iconic K-pop song in the past ten years. In 2016, it was voted the top K-pop girl group song in the past 20 years in a poll by Dong-a Ilbo, Idology, and M Brain. A panel of 35 critics ranked it the fifth best idol song of all time, crediting it as a catalyst for K-pop popularization. In 2023, Rolling Stone named it the greatest song in Korean pop music history.