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Saturday, June 15, 2019

Song of the Week! 15 June 2019


Due to time constrains, we couldn't have our usual "last goodbye" feature to the nth arcade-exclusive song that is about to leave Taiko gaming for good, due to its imminent removal.

Rest assured that every knot comes to our comb, though...

 FANTASTIC BABY
Version
Allx3 (136)x3 (167)x5 (394)x7 (543)
 Taiko 0 B
 130
 none
 ???


Together with the second opening of the Himouto! Umaru-chan Anime serialization (of which we already talked about here, two years-ish ago), another kind of 'second' is about to permanently part ways with Taiko gaming for good. Quite the sad scenario for the second K-Pop song after KARA's MISTER to make it into the arcade scene, isn't it?

Released on March 7th, 2012, FANTASTIC BABY is the 15th single from the South Korean boyband Big Bang (Hangul: 빅뱅; often romanized as BIGBANG), in activity since 2006. Originally being a 5-men act with the nick-named T.O.P, Taeyang, G-Dragon, Daesung and Seungri, it currently is a quarted under the Warner Music Taiwan label, as the latter of the artists has retired from the industry on March of this year. Boasting over 20 single releases and tens between studio albums and EPs combined, the act has won a lot of notoriety and accolades for becoming the de-facto ambassadors of Korean Pop around the world, with its members being cited by Forbes as some of the most influential Korean celebrities in 5 different years and netting music production-related accolades, both on national as well as international fields.

FANTASTIC BABY has made its debut as the third track in a trio of songs that were premiered in order to advertise the Extended Play album Alive, as well as filling the role of being the third single of the band being released under the Korean YG Entertainment label. Ranging between EDM, hip hop and electropop genre vibe, this track has managed to become the best-seller Korean song of all time in digital distribution, charting top-10 placements in the South Korean Gaon Music and Digital charts as well as foreigner venues, including Japan's Billboard Hot 100 and the Rolling Stone publication, which ranked it as the 22nd greatest boy band song of all time. The digital single release also went on to become one of the greatest, with over 4 million downloads in South Korea alone and 6.5 millions across the Asian continent, with its music video on Youtube being the country's most watched one (over 300 million views). Finally, FANTASTIC BABY was also played during the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang.

Despite all the high accolades of the song, the aforementioned MISTER on Taiko 1-upped FANTASTIC BABY in song representation means, as the latter came up as a playable cover. The Oni chart by Yamaguchi (ヤマグチ) offers a variety of cluster formations that you would normally expect from a steady-paced pop song, with longer clusters and consecutive giant notes being saved for the busier middle portion of the track.