Me Gustas Tu (GFriend song)

On July 13, 2015, Source Music announced the upcoming release of GFriend's second EP, Flower Bud.[2] The album was released as a digital download on July 23, and was released in CD format on July 27.[3] The music video for lead single "Me Gustas Tu" was produced by Zanybros and directed by Hong Won-ki. One of the settings is a "dream-like" forest with the members wearing white lace dresses and rompers.[4] "Me Gustas Tu" is the second song in the group's "school series" and represents a trip during summer vacation.[5][6] The group's "pure" image was complemented by powerful dance choreography, rare for a girl group with an "innocent" concept.[7] The choreography was created by Park Jun-hee, and the most notable part involves Yerin vaulting over Umji, while Yuju slides underneath in a split.[8][9] It took the group three months to perfect the difficult moves.[10]

The song was written and produced by Iggy and Youngbae, who previously produced the debut song of the group.[15]

The song debuted at number 27 on the Gaon Digital Chart, on the chart issue dated July 19–25, 2015, with 66,912 downloads sold and 1,014,574 streams.[16][17][18] In its second week, the song rose to number 15.[19] In its eighth week, the song peaked at number 8, staying for two consecutive weeks, marking the group's first Top 10 single in South Korea.[20][21] The song placed at number 59 on the chart, for the month of July 2015, with 137,376 downloads sold and 3,061,299 streams.[22][23][24] For the month of August, the song rose to number 23, with 230,905 downloads sold and 9,734,931 streams, and peaked at number 13 in September, with 233,310 downloads sold and 13,117,951 streams.[25][26][27][28][29][30] The song made the year-end chart as the 38th best selling song of 2015, selling 1,013,776 downloads and accumulating 50,169,974 streams.[31][32][33] It was also the 27th best selling song of 2016, selling 1,150,274 downloads and accumulating 66,037,226 streams.[34][35][36] The song surpassed 100 million streams in July 2016 and 2,500,000 downloads in November 2017.[37] As of 2017, it as received over 136 million streams in South Korea.[38]

A music video for the song was released first on MBC Music on July 20, 2015 (rated as "General Audiences") and uploaded three days later on the respective YouTube channels of the group and the single's distributor. The video, directed by Hong Won-ki from Zanybros, features the group in outdoor scenes, intercalated with dance scenes in a field. Due to the distribution change from Genie Music (formerly KT Music) to kakao M (formerly LOEN Entertainment), the music video was reuploaded on the YouTube channel of the latter's 1theK service on November 2, 2017. In turn, the former deleted the video from its own account.

GFriend promoted the album with performances of "Me Gustas Tu" on various music shows, starting with M Countdown on July 23.[39] On September 5, they performed the song at an SBS Radio event in Inje, Gangwon Province. The stage floor was wet due to the rain, and Yuju slipped and fell five times during the performance, while SinB fell once.[40][41] A fan posted a video of the performance to YouTube, which subsequently went viral, boosting the group's popularity.[40][42][43] Promotion for the album ended the next day, with a performance of "Glass Bead" and "Me Gustas Tu" on Inkigayo.[44] In January 2016, "Me Gustas Tu" was one of the songs broadcast via loudspeaker across the Korean Demilitarized Zone, as part of South Korea's anti-Pyongyang propaganda program Voice of Freedom.[45] The broadcast was a response to a North Korean nuclear bomb test.[46][47]