After the success of Alive, YG announced that the EP would be repackaged as a special editionstudio album with additional songs and re-titled as Still Alive. The special edition and its single "Monster", were released June 3, 2012. Daily music video teasers were released from May 25 until the day before the song's release. The music video was shot in a blockbuster scale in a collaboration with Hyundai Card, with use of special effects that "took a month to perfect". Big Bang and Hyundai Card started a project called "Re-Monster" to promote the music video, aimed to give opportunities for indie bands to reinterpret the song. The new redefined songs were uploaded onto Hyundai Music, where they were judged and the winning musicians would have a chance to release a digital single. A Japanese version of the song was included at the Japanese studio albumsAlive and the greatest hits albumThe Best of Big Bang 2006-2014. This version was promoted in the TV showMusic Japan, which was the only live performance of the single on television.
Composition
Composed by G-Dragon and written by the rapper with Choi Pil-kang, with additional rap parts penned by T.O.P, "Monster" was described as "a modern interpretation of the late 2000s sad, upbeat" Big Bang songs, such as "Lies" and "Haru Haru." The instrumental was noted for clashing a "gentle melody against orchestral cacophonies" and for flipping "pensative verses" with an "aggressive chorus." The lyrics "depicts a denial of one's own nature."
Reception
Billboard named "Monster" Big Bang's eighth best song, writing that the track shows the group "at their most dramatic" and that the "sneaking, subtle intro and outro refrains from T.O.P and G-Dragon" provide the song "the perfect touch of eeriness." Sun-Times also named the single as one of the group's best songs, stating that it proved "they could do upbeat songs with a heart." The song debuted at number one on the Gaon Digital Chart, with 757,501 downloads and 2,980,293 streams in its first week. On the second week, the single dropped to number three, selling 286,386 digital downloads and being streamed 2,618,701 times. "Monster" landed at number fourteen on Gaon's Digital Year-End chart, with over 2,3 million downloads, the twenty best-selling song of 2012.
