On March 30, 2015, the boys of EXO made a return with their second studio album, EXODUS. The lead track, “Call Me Baby,” is about a man opening his heart to the woman who brightened his life up.
EXO is a unique idol group; there are ten members split into two sub-groups: EXO-M and EXO-K. EXO-M promotes in China and EXO-K promotes in Korea with the same track that is sung in either Korean or Chinese. And sometimes the two sub-units will join together to release a track.
The two music videos for the track is essentially the same video, with the four same scenes being used: car garage, sitting room/stairway, large open brick room and a large open white room. Although the two videos are identical, there are a couple of differences. The first difference is the car at the beginning; the Korean version has a white car and the Chinese version has a red car. The second is the different positioning of the group members in the scenes; the Korean members are featured more in the Korean version and the Chinese members are featured more in the Chinese version. Although, unless you know which member is which, the viewer would not be able to tell the difference between the members positioning in the video.
SM Entertainment has gone for a very simple music video; there is no story line utilized in the video, but the viewers’ focus has been directed entirely to the dance routine EXO performs. While filming the video, EXO has gone for a perceived one-shot camera angle; as though the entire video was shot in one take, EXO have used this technique for a previous track release with very high success. The one-shot perception would have been more believable, if it were not for the scene and outfit changes that occurred throughout the video.
With the video focused on the choreography, there are very few options the director can choose to make the video stand out more. A lot has gone into the group members’ fashion style, so it blends in smoothly with the flow of the video. The overall fashion choices for the group members is inspired by modern fashion trends, but in one of last group scenes, the outfit choices have been inspired by fashion trends from the ’90’s.
The music for the track has a heavy piano/keyboard beat, with other bass-type instruments mixed together to create a dance beat that is addictive, making the listeners want to get up and dance. The heavy dance bass sound goes well with the video, as the video is a focused dance choreography video.
The translated lyrics are: “You make me exist as myself, / you’re the only one in my world / You’re the one, You’re the one / Girl you’re the one I want”, “Baby girl, even among all the greed / and all the words / You showed that you believe in me.” These lyrics talk about a man being in love and the woman making the man’s world better. However, unless you understand or look up the translated lyrics, the listener would not understand that this track is a love song.