Sherlock (Clue + Note)

Did You Know?

• The song was Shinee's first Korean single since Hello (2010), following a year of touring and Japanese promotions.
• A Japanese version titled Sherlock was released on May 16, 2012, with the B-side Keeping Love Again.

Development and composition

Sherlock (Clue + Note) was created by combining two separate album tracks, Clue and Note, making it K-pop's first hybrid remix. SM Entertainment's A&R department, led by Lee Sung-soo, involved around 30 people who reviewed over 100 songs, breaking them into parts and reassembling them. The same process was applied to the lyrics. Clue provides most of the instrumentation, blending new jack swing and hip hop with sounds like a digitized kettle, brass, and shattered glass. Note is more percussive and vocal-driven, carrying the explosive chorus. The song opens with soaring strings that later appeared in Shinee's 2013 track Spoiler. The lyrics follow a Sherlock Holmes theme, using reason from Clue and intuition from Note to solve a case.

Critical reception

Music critics generally received Sherlock (Clue + Note) positively. Rolling Stone highlighted it as an example of K-pop's innovation and named it among the greatest boy band songs in 2015 and again in 2020. Dazed's Taylor Glasby praised its complexity and the band's confrontational energy, calling it a coming of age for Shinee. Billboard noted the song's role in pushing Korean industry innovation forward and listed it among the best K-pop songs of the 2010s.

Commercial performance

Sherlock (Clue + Note) debuted at number one on the weekly Gaon Digital Chart and peaked at number three on the K-pop Hot 100. In South Korea, it sold 1,720,124 downloads in 2012, ranking 74th on the year-end Gaon Download Chart and 81st on the year-end Gaon Digital Chart. In the U.S., it reached number four on Billboard World Digital Song Sales and charted for ten weeks. By December 2017, it had sold 30,000 downloads in the U.S., making it Shinee's fourth best-selling single there.

Music video

The music video was filmed in early March in Namyangju and directed by Cho Su-hyun. Set in a museum, it depicts the members as detectives solving a case, with Girls' Generation's Jessica appearing as the mysterious female lead. A teaser was uploaded on March 21, 2012, followed by the video's release on March 22, which received over a million views in one day. Choreography was created by American choreographer Tony Testa, his first work with a K-pop group, completed in ten days. The concept presents the members as one person, inspired by shadow effects from The Matrix, aiming to create an illusion of solitude and memory. Critic Kim Jak-ga described the choreography as a textbook example of K-pop's razor-sharp dance style.