Oh Minji: At the beginning of the film Barbie, girls who played with baby dolls and had no choice but to dream of becoming a mom smash their dolls and escape from motherhood as a new doll, Barbie, appears. That’s because a variety of Barbies taught them that they could have wealth, a car, and a job. In Barbie, all the women in the world are Barbie, who represents and sends out the message that “Because Barbie can be anything; women can be anything.” But our reality is a bit more complicated than Barbie Land where Barbies live. In Barbie Land, there’s neither death nor cellulite for the stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie). She also has feet that can walk comfortably in high heels. However, Gloria (America Ferrera), who brought Barbie out to the real world, gets so stressed from juggling parenting and work that she ends up designing “depressed Barbie” and “cellulite Barbie.” And to close the rip in the portal between the two worlds, Barbie and Ken (Ryan Gosling) set out on a journey to the real world.

Arriving in the real world, Barbie experiences “men treating her like an object and women hating her,” and finds out that all the executives at Mattel, the company that produces Barbies for girls, are men. When the devastated Barbie says she’s no longer pretty, smart, funny, or intelligent, Gloria tells her the following line, which also reaches the audience: “If all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.” Just like how Barbie showed at the start of the movie that she’s a reflection of the girls’ reality back then, Barbie asks women in the real world via Barbie. Like what Gloria said, what should women in society who have a hard time living as a woman do? Barbie doesn’t give a definite answer. Instead, just like the Barbie doll did in the first scene, it sends a message to the real world through Barbie. In Barbie Land, when someone says, "I think I'm really beautiful," all the different Barbies respond with "Me too," and when someone compliments by saying, "You’re the voice of our age,” they reply, “I know.” Those conversations that boost each other's self-esteem overlap with that of an elderly woman in the real world who replies to Barbie's comment, “You're so beautiful,” with “I know it.” Unlike the Barbies in Barbie Land who are beautiful, carefree, and live young all their life, women in the real world have to suffer from various contradictions from time to time, worrying every moment, and getting old, “for being a woman,” like Gloria’s monologue. While Barbie recognizes and reveals the difference between Barbie and women in the real world, it convinces the audience that the message “Because Barbie can be anything; women can be anything” is still valid. Turning Barbie in Barbie Land into someone that sends support and tribute to all the “ordinary Barbies (and “just Kens”)” living in the imperfect real world—what an exciting turning point in the history of Barbie!

Na Wonyoung (Music Critic): The reason I chose this track out of “a lot of other lead singles” on youra’s first regular album A Lot of Tentacles is because of the lyric phrase “I'm a superficial cave / I'm like some lichen debris.” Since no other word can describe this album and its motive—jazz band Mandong’s EP “The Vibe is a Chance” and Khaled Chamma's album cover—better than “grotesque,” which originally comes from the ancient Roman artifact with a bizarre pattern of animals, plants, and human figures all tangled up that was discovered in a small cave of Italy in the 15th century. Mandong's performance, which is literally “full of motions” constantly wriggles and changes its shape. The sound that bassist Song Namhyun took part in producing and extended gets tangled with youra’s singing, or a combination of disparate words mixed with faint pronunciation, presenting unfamiliarity. However, the “shapeless and imperfect” sound doesn't just strike the audience as too strange because youra's unfamiliar patterns are more like a lot of rules twisted together than something indescribably irrelevant to reality. Because once you become used to the sound that resembles slimy tentacles and bulging bumps, you’ll find the repeated vocal melodies and guitar riffs making up the pop song’s structure as well as its slippery grooves squeezed from the drum and bass beats. However, “I Sing, I’ve No Shape, I’m Incomplete, and I Fly” feels like it’s laughing at you, saying, “You’ve been fooled,” because the strange vines that compose the song are made of lichen debris. The improvised section that cuts off the play’s flow; the whispering chorus ringing distractedly in the air; and the dynamic, busy rhythm all make you stop trying to find a certain consistent pattern as you listen. Even when the song asks, “What's inside me?” as if it knows its own insecurity, this sense of emptiness may feel all the more emptier. Yet, this tightly winding vibe as soon as the stabilized meanings are emptied out may give the audience a chance to suddenly become close to those bizarre, grasping tentacles once they’re ready to accept them.