Japanese-Korean J-Pop Group G-EGG Accused Of Plagiarizing SHINee’s “Our Page” Music Video

A Japanese-Korean J-Pop group by the name of G-EGG came under fire on August 17 after K-Pop fans found remarkable similarities between the group’s recent release “I Don’t Care” and SHINee‘s “Our Page” music video.

According to agency Y-NA Entertainment, G-EGG is a “global idol development project” aiming to make it big in both Japan and Korea. The group is made up of 20 members—10 Korean and 10 Japanese—split across four teams.

In April this year, G-EGG C Team released the music video for their first song, “I Don’t Care”. Now, four months on, K-Pop fans have stumbled across the song’s music video, picking up on notable similarities between “I Don’t Care” and SHINee‘s “Our Page”.

In the music video for “I Don’t Care”, five G-EGG members can be seen standing on a glossy cuboid platform. Both above and below, they are surrounded by fluorescent bulbs on long, black stands.

Styled in pastel-colored suits, the group spends the majority of the video dancing and singing on this set while the lighting cycles through a rainbow of colors.

Look familiar? If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu looking at scenes from “I Don’t Care”, that’s probably because near-identical scenes appear in the music video for “Our Page” by SHINee.

Just like G-EGG, the members sing on a raised cuboid podium. And sure enough, they’re surrounded by hanging bulbs that look almost identical to those in the “I Don’t Care” music video. The SHINee members are also styled in pastel suits, with the background lighting shifting through purple, pink, and blue.

Unsurprisingly, SHINee’s fandom (known as Shawol) believe the similarities are too close to be a coincidence. “Our Page” was released in June 2018, around two years before “I Don’t Care”, making SHINee’s music video the definite original.

Many fans are also feel that while the possible plagiarism is bad enough, the insensitivity showed by G-EGG and Y-NA Entertainment is worse. Written by the SHINee members themselves, “Our Page” was an emotional and touching tribute to their late fellow member, Jonghyun, who passed away in December 2017.

The lyrics reference SHINee as a five-member group, with Minho singing, “When I look back on the path that I walked along, I see five folded hands, tears, and memories“. The music video also features a fifth mic stand, left for Jonghyun. As such, many Shawols felt upset watching G-EGG C Team’s five members perform their song in a very similar setting.

Both fans and figures like Stacy Nam, a K-Pop correspondent who has interviewed SHINee several times, are calling on G-EGG and their agency to address the similarities between the two videos.

To the director/producer of this @Gegg_yna MV: Did you think you could get away w/ this blatant plagiarism of @SHINee's "Our Page" MV? To plagiarize especially with THIS song, which is so deeply personal & intimate, is fucking disgusting & disrespectful https://t.co/uqignRyqJ3

— Stacy (@stacynam) August 17, 2020

As of yet, both Y-NA Entertainment and SHINee’s label, SM Entertainment, are yet to issue a statement.

Check the similarities for yourself here: