E

The record

E is the fourth and last single in BIGBANG’s MADE series, released on 5 August 2015. It carries ‘쩔어 (Zutter)’, sung by G-Dragon and T.O.P, and ‘우리 사랑하지 말아요 (Let’s Not Fall in Love)’ by the whole group. It is the fourth monthly release, after M, A and D.

YG Entertainment’s album introduction called the single the last step on the way to the full-length album. The same text presented ‘쩔어’ as a unit song by G-Dragon and T.O.P, their first together in five years, and described ‘우리 사랑하지 말아요’ as an ordinary love story told in the group’s own way rather than a familiar one. ‘IF YOU’ and ‘맨정신 (Sober)’ from D had filled July before it.

Reviews

Jeong Yu-na of IZM took the single in the outlet’s August 2015 singles column. She wrote that the song stands on the ingredients BIGBANG have always used, and then: “It is their own character that turns this familiar BIGBANG sound, little by little, into a particular song.” She placed that character precisely: “Singing the chorus plainly adds something new, and even the swaggering lyric carries through into ‘style and devotion’.”

The same piece reads the single as the fourth panel of a four-month plan. “By the time you reach round four, you find yourself concentrating on the picture the eight dots have made,” she wrote, adding that “varied, experimental songs are up on the charts, and BIGBANG can share a stranger and deeper range with the public.” Her last two sentences: “There was no great change, but both the territory they can express and the ways of doing it have grown. It will stand as a good case of dividing up the force you hold without showing your limits.”

Among the tracks

‘우리 사랑하지 말아요’ is the song that carries the single’s music video, and the song Jeong Yu-na was writing about above. She noted that its craft recalls Still Alive from 2012 and wrote that “the video and the song are tangled together and aim at a point beyond the music.” The song was collected on the full-length MADE a year and a half later, and has a page of its own on this site.

‘쩔어’ is the G-Dragon and T.O.P unit song. The album introduction says the two had not released a song together in five years and presented it as a track to wash off the heat of midsummer. It is the first place in the series where a song by two of the members alone appears.

Afterwards

The eight songs from the four singles were collected on the full-length MADE on 13 December 2016, with three new tracks. The album arrived more than a year after the September 2015 date the series had announced.