Hello
Annyeong
Konnichiwa
Ni Hao
I feel like it's been such a long time since I've posted about EXO, I did post about them back in December with their 2nd winter album, Sing For You but the last post before that was just over a year ago back in January 2016 with their repackaged album Love Me Right, I told you back in that January post the Love Me Right was my favourite comeback and title track from EXO, well that's about to change.
Ex'Act is EXO's 3rd full length album, on May 31st SM Entertainment announced that EXO would be returning a their 3rd full length album. On June 2nd they revealed that the album would be titled Ex'Act and that they would be promoting not 1 but 2 tracks titled Lucky One & Monster, both if which would have very different visual concepts.
On June 3rd 2016 an M/V teaser was released for Lucky One.
Owned by SM Entertainment
On the 5th of June an M/V teaser was released for Monster.
Owned by SM Entertainment
The next day on the 6th of June another M/V teaser was released but this time for the Chinese version.
Owned by SM Entertainment
On the 8th/9th of June both the Lucky One & Monster M/V's were released in both Korean and Chinese along with the release of both the Korean & Chinese versions of their album Ex'Act.
Lucky One (Korean)
Owned by SM Entertainment
Monster (Korean) Performance Version
Owned by SM Entertainment
Lucky One (Chinese)
Owned by SM Entertainment
Monster (Chinese)
Owned by SM Entertainment
Ex'Act received a record-breaking pre-order, selling 660,000 copies, just 3 days after it's official release it became the fastest selling album in the history of South Korean album sales chart Hanteo with over 450,000, breaking the record that EXO themselves previously held, with their mini album Sing For You. Promotions for the album began June 9th.
Chanyeol participated on the creation of the album with him co-writing the lyrics for track Heaven.
Monster did well on music shows winning a total of 9 music show trophies, winning 3 on M! Countdown, 3 on Music Bank, 2 on Inkigayo and 1 on Show Champion, EXO were also nominated for 12 awards at award shows in which they won 6, which included winning Album Of The Year for Ex'Act at the MAMA (Mnet Asian Music Awards) Awards and Best Male Dance for Monster at the Melon Music Awards.
Monster & Lucky One peaked at No.1 & No.3 on Billboards World Digital Songs and No.1 & No.5 on Gaon's Weekly Digital Chart. Ex'Act peaked at No.1 (Korean) & No.2 (Chinese) on the Gaon Albums Chart, No.8 (Korean) & No.16 on Oricon's Albums Chart and No.2 (albums combined) on Billboards World Albums Chart.
Gaon Sales:
Korean - 570,306+
Chinese - 255,805+
Totalling - 826,111+ copies sold
Oricon Sales:
Korean -24,679+
Chinese - 7,210+
Totalling - 31,889+ copies sold
Meaning EXO have sold 858,000 copies of Ex'Act so far.
A repackaged album was released on the 18th of August, I'll be posting about that on a later date. Both M/V's have done really well for views with the Korean version of Lucky One having 39,789,996 million views so far and the Chinese version having 2,956,580 million views so far, giving Lucky One a combined total of 42,746,576 million views. Monster is the most popular of the 2 with the Korean version having 106,850,512 million views and the Chinese version having 4,384,683 million views, giving Monster a combined total of 111,235,195 million views, and I'm sure the views will continue to increase with each day.
There are 4 version in total of the Ex'Act album that were released: Lucky One in both Korean and Chinese and Monster in both Korean and Chinese. The lucky One versions have a white cover and slipcase and the Monster versions have a black cover and slipcase, the back of the cases have all 9 of their logo's that they've used for their albums including their latest logo's a flowery style EXO logo for Lucky One and the EXO logo being made of bones to fit the monster theme for Monster. They are all set out as a hardback style case with the CD's being white in the Korean versions and black in the Chinese versions. The photobooks differ slightly in both the Korean and Chinese versions with the pictures following the same concepts for the albums but the pictures being from different angles etc, there is an interview with each member in the albums in both Korean and Chinese with the questions being different in both the Monster version and Lucky One version. Monster goes with a dark concept throughout the booklets whereas the Lucky One has a brighter concept.
Track List (Korean):
Lucky One
Monster
Artificial Love
Cloud 9
Heaven
백색소음 (White Noise)
유리어항 (One and Only)
They Never Know
Stronger
Lucky One (INST.)
Monster (INST.)
Track List (Chinese):
Lucky One
Monster
Artificial Love
Cloud 9
Heaven
白色噪音 (White Noise)
玻璃鱼缸 (One and Only)
They Never Know
Stronger
Lucky One (INST.)
Monster (INST.)
I have 2 copies of Ex'Act, I have the Korean version which is the Lucky One version and the Chinese version which is the Monster version, I love how the albums are set out, they remind me of the books you would buy to study from like making notes for the meanings in Shakespeare's books. Personally for me I love the styling for Monster as it's not something I've seen EXO do before, there are members that stand out for me in both of the versions but there are also members than can pull of both of the concepts like Sehun and Xiumin, I think i always lean more towards the Monster concept too because I'm used to seeing them with heavy eye-liner or eye make up so it's strange seeing Baekhyun with minimal eye-liner and a more fresh face look, I do find it cute though that they give him freckles. Chanyeol and Lay always seem to be able to pull off any concept they're given, I may be being biased saying this as Chanyeol is my main bias but I don't think I've ever disliked a concept they've given him, he seems very versatile. On first listen to Ex'Act there were songs that stood out to me on first listen especially Artificial Love, I can honestly that's my favourite track on the album, but after a few listens I loved the album from start to finish. As I said at the start of this post Love Me Right was my favourite comeback and title track from EXO, well that all changed when they released the Monster M/V, Monster is now my favourite comeback and title track. I think the main reason why I liked it so much was because EXO had never done anything like that before, they'd never really done a dark concept before and they pulled it off really well, I liked they continued the dark concept for their repackaged comeback, it personally for me shows that EXO are a versatile group and can pull off any concept they put their mind to. Lucky One to me sounded like it's something they would do but Monster seemed like a track that VIXX would do, Lucky One wasn't even given to SM with EXO in mind LDN Noise originally gave the track with SHINee in mind so I'm glad EXO got it instead, even LDN Noise said they were glad that EXO ended up with the track in the end. Overall this is such an amazing album which is to be expected coming from EXO, even the routines to the tracks are amazing especially for Artificial Love, I can't watch that routine without fangirling, blushing and peeking to watch through my fingers. Like I'm doing with BTS' Wings extension album I'm going to be sharing all the tracks from the albums and splitting them between posts, so check out the first 7 tracks below in a mixture of both Korean and Chinese.
Artificial Love - Korean
By
Heaven - Chinese
By
Stronger - Chinese
By
They Never Know - Korean
By
玻璃鱼缸 (One and Only)
By
Lucky One - Korean
By
Monster - Korean
By MBCkpop
MBCkpop
I always buy both the Korean and Chinese versions of their albums, I often tend to pre-order them, the only versions I am missing of their albums are the Chinese versions of their past releases which are XOXO repackaged, Miracles in December and Sing For You. I have the Chinese version of their latest repackaged on the way so it should be here in time for that repackaged album post. I hope you liked the songs I shared with you in today's post whether you did or not there's still more to come so please anticipate them.
Which is your favourite EXO comeback so far?
which concept do you prefer: Lucky One or Monster?
Which track so far is your favourite from Ex'Act so far?
Let me know in the comments below.
See you soon!
Annyeong
Sayonara
Zai Jian
Bye
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