Miracles in December

In early November 2013, Exo's management agency, SM Entertainment, announced Exo would be holding a joint concert, titled "Christmas Wonderland", with f(x) from December 24 to 25.[4] On December 3, a 2-minute medley clip for the Korean and Mandarin-language versions of the Miracles in December EP were released. On December 4, the music videos for "Miracles in December" were unveiled on YouTube.[5]

Released in two languages, Exo-K, Exo's Korean-language sub-group, recorded the EP's tracks in Korean while Exo-M, the Mandarin-language sub-group, performed the same songs in Mandarin. A pop ballad with classical piano accompaniment, the lead single "Miracles in December", was written by Andreas Stone Johansson and Rick Hanley. However, the song was only performed by four Exo members: Baekhyun, D.O., and Chen recorded the song in Korean, while Baekhyun, Chen, and Luhan recorded it in Mandarin. Special performances by all four (Baekhyun, D.O., Chen, and Luhan) members, with Lay miming the piano, were often performed on made-for-TV live music programs such as Inkigayo and Music Bank.

"Miracles in December" according to the description of the album on the site of Korean music Naver Music is a song genre pop-ballad that uses the piano and strings in your arrangement.[6] The song was composed and arranged by composers veterans such as Andreas Johansson Stone and Rick Hanley in collaboration with the production team of SM Entertainment. The voices in the Korean version are provided by Chen, Baekhyun and D.O., while the mandarin version belongs to the first two, and Luhan.

The song talks about a man who recalls with nostalgia the relationship with his former girlfriend and his desire to return to it, but cannot do so because of the shame and guilt.[7] Yoon So Ra and Liu Yuan wrote the letters of the Korean and Chinese version respectively.[6]

The music videos for "Miracles in December" (one Korean, one Mandarin) were directed by Jo So-hyun, and were filmed in November in Paju, Gyeonggi-do and a studio in Ilsan, near Seoul.[7]

On December 2, 2013 a few teasers for the Korean and Chinese version of the music video was released on official YouTube channel of SM Town, causing a lot of interest from fans.[8] This, however, many thought that the group was promoting as a new sub-unit, which led to SM to clarify the rumors. A representative of the agency said that "it is true Baekhyun, D.O. and Chen to sing the single main... That does not mean that they are officially a sub-unit... We are planning to implement other members also to climb on stage for various performances». And continued: «We are preparing several performances because this album is a special album of winter and is full of gratitude to the fans and it is not correct to call this a new sub-unit activity.»[9]

On December 4, 2013 both versions of the videos were announced, at 8:00pm (KST) and were released on video-sharing websites.[5] The music video was directed by Jo Soo-hyun, and was filmed in November in Paju, Gyeonggi in a study in Ilsan.[7]

On December 5, Exo held their debut performances from the album with "Miracles in December" on Mnet's M Countdown stage.;[10] and the song was made available for download as digital single.[11]

On December 9, 2013 the EP Miracles in December was released.

On December 19 The group staged the Korean version of "Christmas Day" (Simplified Chinese: 耶诞节) on M Countdown. Performances featured all twelve members of Exo with accompanying choreography produced by Tony Testa and Greg Hwang.

The EP finished at numbers 1 and 2 both weekly[12] and monthly[13] on the Gaon Albums Chart, for the Korean and Mandarin versions, respectively. The "Miracles in December" single (Korean version) reached number 2 on Gaon's Weekly Digital Singles Chart[14] and number 3 on Billboard's Korea K-Pop Hot 100.[15] The Mandarin version of the song was number 47 on the Gaon chart,[14] but topped the Gaon International Singles Chart.[16] It also went to number 7 on China's Baidu charts. "Christmas Day"'s Korean edition reached number 5[14] and 38[17] on the Gaon and K-Pop Hot 100 weekly charts, respectively, and the Mandarin edition reached number 10 on Baidu's charts.

In December, Exo began their promotions running Korean version live on several local music programs, including M Countdown 5, Music Bank 6, Show! Music Core 7 and Inkigayo 8. In the following week's promotions, SM informed that Luhan and Lay also participate in presentations, as well as promised the fans.[18] Baekhyun, Chen and D.O. appeared on the stage of SBS MTV's The Show on December 17, 2013 and Show Champion on December 18, 2013. The song was also included in the set-list of the winter festival of the group with his classmates seal f(x) SM Town Week: Christmas Wonderland on 23 and 24 December 2013.[19] The Chinese version of "Miracles in December" was acted in the MTV The Show on December 24, 2013 with D.O., Luhan, Baekhyun, Chen and Lay members.

K-pop critic "Seoulbeats" gave a positive review of the song saying that "[it's] really worth all the hype that it's receiving." Analysis indicated that "Miracles in December" just grows and grows throughout its duration and commended the harmonization as "a thing of beauty".[20]

Credits adapted from Naver.

Korean and Chinese versions

Combined version