행복 (Happiness)

The song

‘행복 (Happiness)’ is the debut single Red Velvet released on 4 August 2014. The group started as four — Seulgi, Irene, Wendy and Joy. The album introduction on Bugs, written by SM Entertainment, says the name joins the images of a vivid, arresting red and a soft, feminine velvet, and that Seulgi, Irene and Wendy were the first members to debut by way of the pre-debut team SMROOKIES, with Joy introduced for the first time on this single.

The same text describes the song as an urban Euro pop track built on strong synths and an African-inflected tribal beat, with a lyric about drawing strength from the small happiness of ordinary days and coming to like oneself more.

Reviews

Idology (아이돌로지) ran the single as three writers’ short notes in ‘1st Listen’, its column on the records of early August 2014. Mimyo wrote that the song takes a theme traditional to debut singles and so may take time to judge, but that the production’s care shows in how it places elements recalling the label’s older acts through the song and treats girlishness as one parameter among others, easing the demand on the listener. Of the way the track closes he wrote: “And here is a message song that boldly holds its central message down and pours out a vocal salad of sample repetitions, tape stops and pitch shifts instead — that is nerve.” Yu Je-sang wrote in the same column: “Sudden as it is, this much makes for an impressive debut.”

The outlet’s Masitneun Pahita gave the first instalment of his series on debut songs to this track on 24 August 2014. He began from the fact that the song has four people talking about the secret of their own happiness, and set that against the way girl-group debut singles had generally cast the listener in a one-sided romance. “They do not court anyone. The word ‘love’ never appears, and the word ‘you’ turns up exactly once in the whole song.” Pointing to a lyric that sets the money and power adults talk about against the happiness to be found right beside you, he called the song’s place “the beginning of a very large change”.

Tássia Assis of NME placed the song 35th in the 127-song retrospective the outlet published on 1 August 2024 for the group’s tenth anniversary. She called the debut single “exactly what you would expect: an unbridled explosion of joie de vivre”, quoting the lyric that pities the adults who chase only money and power and noting the greater wonders the song offers instead — telling your mother you love her, linking arms with your best friend on the way to school. She closed the entry: “From the stomping beats to Wendy’s showstopping bridge, ‘Happiness’ will turn a decade old soon, but its appeal and positive message remain timeless.”

Afterwards

The second single ‘Be Natural’ followed two months later, and in March 2015, after Yeri joined and the group became five, the first mini album Ice Cream Cake arrived.