Mirotic

 

Mirotic is TVXQ's fourth South Korean award-winning studio album, released on September 26, 2008. Three days after its release, Mirotic became the best selling album of the year, topping the 2008 Hanteo yearly charts with 333,000 copies sold. On November 15, 2008, the album won the album of the year award at the 2008 MKMF Korean Music Festival awards selling over 500,000 copies. Also, it is the album that lead the slump of album sales that affected the years between 2006-2008. "Mirotic" sold over 208,000 copies of version A in the month of october in Hanteo Chart, and also surpassed the 500,000 mark barrier sale in only 109 days after its release. "Mirotic" was the first album in 4 years to break the 500,000 sales mark after Seo Taeji. It is currently the most-sold album of the 2nd generation idols which spans a decade, and could be called as the "album of the decade."
According to a statement by SM Entertainment mid-July 2011, the album currently sells at 640,000 copies in South Korea alone.

The album had been in production since 2007, but the title was not decided upon until January 2008. TVXQ members Xiah Junsu and Max Changmin participated directly in the making of the album, penning the lyrics for "노을.. 바라보다 (Picture of You)" and "Love in the Ice", respectively. In addition, members Hero Jaejoong and Micky Yoochun composed and wrote the lyrics to "사랑아 울지마 (Don't Cry My Lover)" and "사랑 안녕 사랑 (Love Bye Love)", respectively, for version C of the album.
The choreography of "주문-Mirotic," the title track of the album, was done in a collaboration between Korean choreographers and Kenny Wormald, who had also worked with pop stars Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown and Christina Aguilera. The song features a "reverse beat" track, meaning that the bass beat is either a half beat or a whole beat late in coming into a new phrase. While in most genres of music, the bass note comes in directly on the first beat of the measure in setting the chord of the phrase, reverse beat songs alter this usual method. In doing so, the reverse beat genre is said to have an effect of "growing on" the listener, having an addictive sound.
"Mirotic" is a newly coined term, created by Hero Jaejoong, that combines the Korean miro (미로), meaning "maze", and the English suffix "-tic".
The title song was composed by the Danish producers, Remee, Lucas Secon and Thomas Troelsen. The German singer, Sarah Connor, also bought the copyright to the song (not specified when). Despite the fact that the two original songs were the same composed piece, they have musical differences (TVXQ's version has a rap and multi-layered harmonies while Connor's has a bridge; the melodies in the chorus also differ). "Mirotic" is one of the most successful singles ever in South Korea, in 2008 the song was downloaded 2,337,864 times. By the end of 2011 the song was officially downloaded 4,173,225 times.

On November 30th, 2012, "Mirotic" is performed by EXO at the MAMA Awards in Hong Kong, China.

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