Instagram

"Instagram" (stylized in all lowercase) is a song recorded by South Korean musician Dean. It was released on December 26, 2017, by Universal Music Korea and distributed by Joombas Company. An R&B and soul track, it deals with the "stuffy, gloomy" feeling of scrolling through one's Instagram feed late at night. Despite a lack of promotional activities, "Instagram" topped South Korea's national Gaon Digital Chart and peaked at number two on Billboard magazine's K-pop Hot 100. The single sold over 2.5 million downloads domestically and earned Dean the Best Composer of the Year award at the 2018 Mnet Asian Music Awards. Background and composition Dean, wanting to craft an album like himself, thought that, "if I speak truthfully about myself, people could empathize with me". He began to objectively observe himself and took note of his tendency to check the social networking service Instagram. He realized that, in following people he admired and liked, he felt "infinitely small and lacking" by comparison, which led him to depression. He "was sure I wasn't the only one" experiencing relative deprivation. Dean conceived "Instagram" with a degree of similarity to the title character from the novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) living in a city.