Monster

The song

‘MONSTER’ is the title track of Still Alive, the special edition BIGBANG released at midnight on 3 June 2012. Five of the record’s nine songs were new; the rest came from the fifth mini album Alive, out three months earlier. The music video went up on the group’s official channel the day before release, on 2 June.

YG Entertainment’s album introduction, written about the teasers it ran for five days beforehand, describes the song as bringing together a strong visual, a melody that catches in the ear and a powerful vocal. The same text says the record was not made around a planned promotion cycle but put together for the group’s fans.

Reviews

The Singles Jukebox, where a panel of British and American music writers each file a note of their own on one single, covered the song on 18 June 2012.

Will Adams wrote: “As far as songs that sound like dance remixes of piano ballads, this is quite good.” He heard a bass that hums rather than belches and an arrangement with the piano and strings up front, which together make the song sound light and match the sweetness of the whole conceit; the chorus, he wrote, is a thing of beauty.

Brad Shoup heard the same parts moving together: “Piano and synthgauze and bass pulse in parallel, giving ‘Monster’ a perverse amount of danceability.” Jonathan Bogart wrote about the video. “The video for this one makes some unusual choices,” he wrote: “it splits up the boys so that none of them ever share the frame with another, driving home the boy-band conceit of a collective that speaks in an individual voice — and also, incidentally, allowing the costuming and effects to get as outlandish as possible without being overwhelming.”

Numbers

Circle Chart placed the song at number one on its Digital Chart for week 23 of 2012 (3 to 9 June), the week of release. All nine songs from Still Alive were on that week’s chart, with the four other new ones behind it: ‘STILL ALIVE’ at number three, ‘EGO’ at number four, ‘FEELING’ at number five. The song was at number three the following week, week 24 (10 to 16 June).