Greatest Hits:: BIGBANG: Sober

 Happy anniversary, BIGBANG!! I am so late with this, but I was not going to skip this because it's the big 2-0 and I would have to make an entire other post to talk about why BIGBANG requires acknowledgement as one of the biggest playmakers in shaping what K-Pop became. I find it amusingly fitting that their company was founded by a member of the boy group generally acknowledged to be the first K-Pop group: SeoTaiji and Boys. Also, fun fact, I went to a cupsleeve event yesterday (as of writing this paragraph) for their anniversary and I really liked that they included TOP in the design, even if he was on one side and the three current members were on the other.

Some related bookkeeping first though. There is a prison-striped elephant in the room with this group. If you are OT5 for this group, you may want to skip this post. If I acknowledge him, it will be with begrudging frustration and a curled lip, and only if I have no choice. I'd be lying if I said his immoral choices and actions (and the consequences thereof) were not a heavy blow to K-Pop, but while I can separate art from artist fairly well and acknowledge that I hate how talented he is, I'd rather not make it look like I'm even in the same country as supporting or including him in this celebration.

BIGBANG debuted in 2006 as a five-member group under YG Entertainment. They're currently down to three, with TOP leaving in 2023. But they were one of the first groups to be dubbed the "Kings of K-Pop" and many of their later songs inherently qualify as "events", which is why I formed August around this little trio of songs. A twentieth anniversary as an active group is an event in K-Pop in and of itself, considering most boy groups don't make it to even seven.

So for those of you who don't know, a tiny bit of background on this album. In 2015, BIGBANG released four singles preceding their tour as teasers for their third album and they were supposed to release said album also in 2015 but it didn't end up being released until the end of 2016. That album, MADE, and the preceding singles spawned a lot of beloved songs, including this one, and ended up being in the top ten most streamed albums in South Korea in 2025 on Spotify, nine years after it was released and by far the oldest album on the list. So realistically, I could have picked any of those songs as their event song for their anniversary, but I like the idea of doing the little mini-arc here of songs with the same name. And while normally I classify pre-releases as b-sides, this was released over a year before the actual album. So, Sober was released in 2015 as the third of the singles, D. Our lyricist-only was TOP (SE7EN and Uhm Jung Hwa). G-Dragon (Babymonster, IU, aespa, Okasian, Zion.T, PSY, HwangTaeji, iKON, Vince, Lexy, SE7EN, and Gummy) and Teddy Park (HUNTR/X, BLACKPINK, 2NE1, CL, ALLDAY PROJECT, MEOVV, PSY, Sunmi, iKON, izna, Jeon Somi, Zion.T, MOBB, LeeHi, Cardi B, 1TYM, JINUSEAN, SE7EN, Rania, Dua Lipa, Kang Seung Yoon, and Lee Hyori) were both lyricists and composers.

• Debut Date: 2006 August 19
• Company: YG Entertainment
• Status: Active
• Album: D
• Song: Sober
• Release Date: 2015 July 01

Taeyang is not wearing a shirt, as expected, but his shirt allergy must not have been too bad when they were filming this because he spends most of the music video with a shirt on, which is shocking.

This song has two bridges. Two of them. The extravagance of a four-minute song with two bridges is not lost on me in this day and age, but I certainly am not complaining about this. The day I complain about it is the day you can put me in the ground.

Okay. OT5s, if you're still here, you're going to want to skip this paragraph. I'm just going to point out the absolute irony of Seungri talking about the dangers of chasing after money, power and fame considering what he was doing (and still seems to be doing because self-reflection seems not to be one of his strengths). The hindsight, y'all. Although given how outspoken and critical G-Dragon can be and given what I understand of the timeline of events, someone was already being investigated the year this came out, which means that if you were to tell me that G-Dragon gave him that part on purpose to try to get him to correct his behavior through the use of a Korean idiom about matching your desires to your limitations (see also: Silver Spoon by BTS and I've said it basically as soon as I learned about the older groups that BTS has walked closely the same paths that SeoTaiji and Boys and BIGBANG first tread years earlier), I'd fully believe it. It's also a good example of how clever G-Dragon is in using cultural shorthand to drive meaning, even if it wasn't a specific warning to Seungri, by reinforcing the general meaning with an idiom. And as someone with a literature degree and as an unpublished as-of-yet author (though I have had a couple of offers for my one book), idioms are literally my bread and butter and I just get so excited every single time I run into one. 

Which does mean that when I find K-Pop lyricists that use them, I get very excited.

I'm not going to spend too much time on the music video itself (Seungri's main parts are from :29-:42 and 2:39-2:52), if you wanted to skip seeing him) other than to say that this music video is absolutely bonkers in a way that I only see from a handful of the younger groups these days, and all of them connected to second gen or earlier idols as their CEOs. 

G-Dragon gets to kiss a girl. Taeyang is, I think, taking a shower fully dressed and hanging out in the party taxi. Daesung is just jamming out on the drums like he doesn't have a care in the world. And then there's TOP, who rolls around in the grass and is a delightfully odd human being. Not that the whole group aren't being delightfully odd human beings. I would say acting like but judging by the comments on the music video, this was TOP getting to embrace the absurdity that is in his soul.

We need more of the absurd and whimsical in general, I think. 

And there isn't a single one of them that has normal colored hair. Special shout-out to G-Dragon's iconic orange hair and to the hair that the VIPs have affectionately dubbed Taeyang's French fry hair. Again, there's space to talk about the legacy of black culture influencing and being borrowed from in K-Pop, but the meat of that acknowledgement is being reserved for the DEUX post I'm going to do eventually.

It's also worth pointing out, I think, that while I think the lyrics are specifically talking about soberness from alcohol (the word being used for sober here ("맨정신") translates to "in a sober state", but the word for alcohol ("술") is used in the definition of that word), there is a lot of fog in the music video that could be being used to represent smoke (which circles back to the marijuana incident in Japan in 2011). It's also interesting that we have both G-Dragon and Daesung singing the chorus and switching off on who is singing which part of the chorus, beyond the fact that we have the leader and now-maknae doing it together, which I love. There's a yearning there accompanying the bone-aching exhaustion that comes from weight piled on just by being an adult. I feel like if I'd discovered K-Pop earlier, I wouldn't have the same emotional interactions with some of the older songs, because this one? I feel that chorus now a lot more than I would have when this came out eleven years ago and likely will feel it a lot more in another ten years.

Here's the thing. The four of them have incredibly distinct voices but the song is balanced in a way that allows them to shine without one overpowering another, even when the number of lines is technically shorter. We've got the higher, lazy rapping from G-Dragon and the lower, weighty rapping from TOP to give two very different textures and styles here, but it's the way that their tones affect their lines. Because G-Dragon's voice is higher, and a bit nasally if we're going to be honest here, his confessional lines during the chorus are all the more piercing. And then we've got TOP with his deep voice talking about how he's just a kid that's tall, which is a particular poignancy considering how much is stolen from the idols, but that line would have had a very different weight and connotation to it had that been G-Dragon's line. 

And then we have Taeyang, the one who did manage to find that life away from being an idol to be able to publicly adore the woman he loves and be a father, being the voice to plead for a place to rest and just be in the refrain.

Who sings what part is significant.

And this is why I like doing older songs (even though my statistics would argue otherwise). The power of hindsight introduces a new meaning to the song that was not present at time of release.

Instead of the usual comeback stages, you're going to get a lot of concert clips, including from the most recent tour (and possibly my recording of it when I see them). So we're going to start off with a performance from the 2016 Golden Disc Awards, which was apparently the first time they ever performed this song live.

I'm not even going to insult this performance by pointing out moments where you can tell it's live. You can so clearly hear the backtrack behind their voices and see the tension and movements of their throats that I'm just going to present it as a perfect specimen of a live performance.

Now, that being said, you don't come to a BIGBANG song for sharp, crisp choreography and tightly synchronized movements. After all, the S in BIGBANG stands for synchronization. But they genuinely just seem to play on stage. They start off the song with ad-libbed whooping and vibes in the definition of hootin' and hollerin', for crying out loud, and at 2:07, we get some more whooping. The back-up dancers are great. They're doing so good. But the members kind of remind me of barhopping with the gang and they're on their fourth bar of the night and only now is it time to head to karaoke. 

The vibes are impeccable. 

If I were to point out a single moment those are such obviously live mics, I'd point you to 3:09. Taeyang has a couple of moments during this bit where he pauses to take a breath and let the back-track take it, but otherwise, that man is singing like he just got handed the divorce papers. You can actually see the tendons flexing in his neck. 

And really, I love the way that the green light is reflecting off the back of G-Dragon's silver jacket at 2:51.

There's obviously choreography to this song as you can see the members dancing with more or less the same moves at 1:17 and the choreography hides how TOP comes in at 1:20. If you're not paying attention, he's just kind of there behind Daesung like he apparated, which is impressive considering how well that red velvet coat he's wearing stands out against the bright green of the LED screen. Although at 2:27, it doesn't look like TOP and Daesung are doing the same moves.

And for the record, every single time I see G-Dragon with short black hair, it startles me and I struggle to recognize him. Like, if I ever ran into him (unlikely, but not impossible) and he had short black hair, I 1000% would not believe him even if he pulled out a driver's license and showed me proof of his identity. He looks incredible, don't get me wrong, but also, it doesn't matter how many times I watch this performance; I'm startled and briefly don't recognize him. Also, at 2:30, you can very clearly see that he's got an in-ear out.

And you know who else has black hair in a mostly sensible haircut? TOP. 

I'm also struck by how well the cloning machine in the KQ basement worked in cloning this group.

And lastly, I'm not exactly sure what's going on because it feels like they're doing a modified can-can at 3:23, but I am down for whatever that is. Also, if you pause at 3:23 like I did to snag that timestamp, you've got Daesung grinning so widely his molars are almost visible while one of the dancers has her arm around his shoulders, G-Dragon swaggering and bouncing like he's listening to an entirely different song, and TOP looking like he's speed-walking to the nearest canned goods sale. Taeyang, you'll notice about two seconds later, is spinning around in front of everyone else, lost in his own little world.

It's exactly what I'd expect. Ten out of ten stars. No suggestions available.

Another official performance, this time from the MADE tour in Malaysia, and apparently BIGBANG is beloved in that country, which is delightful to learn. 

Fourteen million views on this video. I've covered songs where the title track music video hasn't managed to hit five percent of this. This is just a song from one of the stops on one of their tours for a group with an older fanbase.

I absolutely love how happy Daesung looks to be playing the drums in a leopard print shirt at the beginning while the crowd chants "Go Daesung!". He's smiling so widely his eyes are closing, and he's playing the drums the entire time. 

I'm happy to have the real G-Dragon back for this video though. He has orange hair. That's his natural state of being.

I'm going to bring up Seungri here, even though I am well-aware of things, only because it's an example of brief maknae bullying, which always makes me smile, and it's more about G-Dragon anyway. First, he's walking like he's got a stick up places at 1:56, but then G-Dragon deliberately runs over, grabs him by the back of the head, and shoves his head down at the end of his part at 2:06. I like seeing the idols play on stage and I like it best when the leaders are the ones playing, because they deserve to have a moment to let the weight on their shoulders ease a bit.

And I don't use the word cool very often when talking about the idols, but TOP's entrance at 2:55 is incredibly cool. The charisma rolling off that man has my eyebrows raising. In recent vernacular, the man doesn't need to aura farm because he is at capacity. He's reached the level cap. Like, wow. 

And I really like how G-Dragon goes and harmonizes with Daesung at 2:47. That's why we like live performances that are live and dynamic. 

And Taeyang just throws himself, body and soul (the man literally jumps into his part here), into the chorus at 4:36 and once again has to take a breath in the middle and let the backtrack take it.

At 4:52, we've got TOP still looking swaggerific and cool, but we've also got G-Dragon doing the "la la la" part with the crowd while they're doing the sort of can-can. It's obviously a lot of hard work because the man leans on the lift Daesung and the drumset are on at 5:16 while the screen is closing. It also looks like Sober may be the last song of that segment, according to the setlist I just looked at to see if it was the main set closer.

BIGBANG was supposed to go to Coachella in 2020. And they didn't. For a worldwide obvious reason.

So when they finally showed up at Coachella in 2026, I was grateful because I was around to watch it. Not in person. I don't like camping that well. Not my vibe. But there was always the YouTube livestream.

This is a fancam from barricade Week 2.

I've gotten pretty familiar with this song. Having spent about a week on it, listening to it over and over, watching the videos very closely, I don't know it fan-well, but I'd like to say my ears know this song. So when I tell you that my ears perked up at :49, it immediately made me go back. I didn't even finish the rest of the video before I was basically looping the same five seconds. 

It's not uncommon for Taeyang to take a breath in the middle of his parts to let the backtrack take it for a second. I've pointed it out on both the preceding clips because it's a good moment where you can hear the difference. He does the same thing at :49, which is a little earlier than we usually hear it, but they're older, the desert around where Coachella is located is fairly dry. It's not an issue. What caught my attention is that the backtrack this time around seems to be quite low for his part. Surprisingly low. Almost non-existent.

And that made me turn and look at G-Dragon again. G-Dragon is moving that mic around like he's forgotten where a mic needs to be pointed to pick up sound. I assumed that, because of how soft his part was, he was lip syncing (again, we have a number of reasons why that could be happening, and while I'd be pretty disappointed, I wouldn't necessarily fully hold it against him). But if the backtrack is that soft during Taeyang's part, and G-Dragon's audio that we're hearing is a bit weird, he might actually just be singing live. There's something weird going on there though and you can hear it. Mic, backtrack, something. Especially because when Daesung comes in at 2:39 to harmonize with G-Dragon, it doesn't sound like Daesung is singing with a backtrack. 

Daesung is flawless as always. And, the best part is, we even get a little bit of a vibrato from him at 2:22. And the screaming for him at 2:26 just makes me smile. He deserves the love. And he looks incredible. That costume combo of the leather jacket and the boot-cut jeans is stunning, especially paired with the permed hair. Literally flawless. 

But you know what? Despite the fact that there seems to be an audio problem of some sort, the charisma that they're showing off is just proving how they managed to survive twenty years in an industry that is notoriously cutthroat, even with the younger groups showing up and dominating the landscape.

Which is why you're getting this song for their twentieth anniversary. It's not their biggest or most well-known song. It's a little bit messy, a little bit emotional, a little bit absurd wrapped up in charisma and entertainment and party-energy, but that's kind of the group as a whole in a nutshell.

This is a song with a lot of big emotions that just gets better as it and the listener get older. Sounds like a party song with lyrics that hit you in your soul. In an ideal world, a certain someone wouldn't have made the choices he did that led him to ruining a lot of lives, so that we could simply enjoy the song without having to worry about supporting said person. However. That being said, it's still objectively a good song. And I wanted to get this out for their twentieth anniversary, but I did not manage to do that. Happy anniversary all the same, BIGBANG. I hope the last twenty years haven't been too hard on y'all.

I'm going to do one more song to finish up the little mini arc from August and then I'll move into the now shortened list for September. Look forward to October. We're going spooky. Also, if you've got any suggestions for me to cover, feel free to drop them either as a comment on literally any post because I'm not all that picky, or if you'd like something more structured and completely anonymous, you've got The Form that you can always drop songs into. I really only need GH/BBS or a regular review, the artist, the song title, and the album with release year. 

Thanks for reading, Champions!

Previous: "Sober" by DKB                                                                                     Next: "Sober" by Hyo