"U" is a song by South Korean pop group Super Junior, and is the group's follow-up release to their debut album Twins. The single topped CD sales charts during the first several weeks after its release on June 7, 2006. "U" peaked at #1 on the monthly MIAK K-pop album charts and sold 91,416 copies by 2008. The song won a total of five music recognitions, being Super Junior's most successful single in the music charts until the release of "Sorry, Sorry" in March 2009. Promotional performances for the title song, "U", did not complete until September 2006. The last general performance for the song was in August 2007 in Tokyo, Japan.
Since the Korean release of "U" in 2006, there has been two more releases of "U" in two different languages, Mandarin and Japanese. The Mandarin version of the single's title song "U" was released in a special Taiwan edition on June 15, 2007. On July 9, 2008, "U / Twins" was released in Japan, which included a Japanese version of "U" in the limited edition release.
Super Junior-M, Super Junior's Mandopop subgroup, also released a cover of "U" on April 8, 2008, marking it the second Mandarin version and third remake of "U". In this version, however, the lyrics were changed completely from the first Mandarin version. Also, new incorporations of a new jazz swing style with new acoustic guitar arrangements and an added hip-hop dance bridge and violin bridge were added to make the song suitable for the Chinese language while keeping close to the original Korean pop vibe.
History
Prior to "U", Super Junior was known for their member line-up, a concept very similar to Japanese girl group Morning Musume. Certain members of Super Junior's first generation were to be switched out and new members were to be added, which would form a second Super Junior generation. However, after the addition of a thirteenth member, Kyuhyun, the group ended their status as a project group and began to release productions as a group with permanent status. "U" is Kyuhyun's debut single.
"U" was made available for download on May 25, 2006 via Super Junior's official website. The second track from the single, "Endless Moment", became available for download four days later. "U" had over 400 thousand downloads within five hours of release and ultimately exceeded 1.7 million downloads, crashing the server.
Composed by Norwegian composer Ken Ingwersen and British musician Kevin Simm with the arrangement of Korean musician Hwang Sung-je, the song was promoted to be a song of "pure pop and dance" with contemporary R&B influences and harmonization. The rap lyrics of the song were written by Eunhyuk, in which the rap is divided to two solos, the first half for Eunhyuk and the second half for Kibum. Donghae also rapped in the background of Kibum's solo. The song lyrics was written by Tae Hoon, who also wrote the song lyrics for another Super Junior song, Dancing Out.
Several remixed versions of "U" were performed, but none of them were released as official singles. One remixed version of the song contains a dance bridge in the middle of the song right before the rap, and another version had the song completely mixed, creating a different pop vibe throughout the whole song.
Reception
"U" became one of Super Junior's biggest hits. "U" yielded number-one spots for five consecutive weeks on two of Korea's top music programs for the first time in the group's career. The song was crowned as SBS Popular Songs Mutizen Song of the week as soon as it was released, being the first award for the group since debut. The song then stayed as Mutizen Song for three weeks on the same program, also simultaneously grabbing two top awards from M.NET's M!Countdown for two weeks. Before promotions for "U" ended, "Dancing Out" was released on July 23, 2006 as part of SMTown's annual summer album, grabbing two awards as soon as it was released. "U" gained critical success, and Super Junior collected over seven awards in five of South Korea's top music award ceremonies as 2006 came to a close, winning Best New Group and popularity awards.
"U" peaked at #1 on the monthly MIAK K-pop album charts, having sold 83,010 copies by 2007, selling more than their debut album Twins by the first half of 2007. The Taiwanese edition of "U" debuted at #6 and peaked at #5 on the Five Music J-pop/K-pop Chart of Taiwan and charted in the top ten for six weeks.