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Article. Kim Yunha (music critic)
Photo Credit. SOURCE MUSIC
On October 17, as on any given day, several new albums were released. Two of them, however, stood out: (G)I-DLE’s fifth mini album, I love, and LE SSERAFIM’s second mini album, ANTIFRAGILE. The former group debuted over four years ago, and the latter some six months ago, so they differ greatly in experience, image and musical direction. In fact, there’s little in common between them besides both being girl groups and that their albums were the most notable releases that day. Still, I was somehow so intrigued by the two albums as a pair. After listening to both several times, it became apparent that they were speaking a different language than anyone had been up to that point.

First, there’s (G)I-DLE. The lead single, “Nxde,” caused a stir right from when the title was first announced, and the lyrics are equally bold. The song has a Marilyn Monroe motif—a pop culture icon of her own time—and everything about it, from the lyrics, to the music video, to their hairstyles, gives the middle finger to a world that saw her as nothing more than a bimbo, with lyrics like, “I’m born nude.” After dancing around the point on the microphone the whole song, the girls close it out by speaking directly: “You’ve got a dirty mind.” Up until now, idols had been avoiding calling anyone out directly, let alone calling them dirty, even though they thought their whole situation was unreasonable and unacceptable, but here, they break that silence and provoke the masses. The lyrics specifically state that you’re the problem, and the problem is your dirty mind. In the music video, a prominent “X” is drawn over the “u” in the title right when this bombshell of a word is dropped. It’s like if an actor in a movie were suddenly staring out of the screen right at you.
LE SSERAFIM takes a different approach to express a similar idea. With a title that suggests even greater strength in the face of adversity, ANTIFRAGILE dares people to take their best shot right from the strong opening track, “The Hydra,” because they’re sure they can overcome anything. They get even more intense when singing in Japanese: “take a swing, here’s my neck … toss me into the Black Sea.” The album continues on as they calmly and sternly talk about “rivals I never knew I had” and the “pointe shoes I left behind” and warn people not to “underestimate the path I’ve walked,” culminating in the crux of their message, which they repeat throughout the upbeat rock chorus of “No Celestial”: “I’m no f***in’ angel / I’m no f***in’ goddess.” Though they replace the F-word with “freakin’” when performing on TV, there’s no denying the nuance of the relief that lies just behind this minor censorship. It’s complete bliss.
Underpinning these groups’ refreshing provocations are their own unique backstories. With leader and producer Jeon So Yeon at the center, (G)I-DLE are pioneers in this theme, showing no fear since their debut, singing, “What’s so scared?” The theme started with no one offering them a crown (I am), evolved to where they put a crown on their own heads (“LION”) and concluded with them realizing that real love comes from loving yourself (I love). But why would they ever be afraid of anything after climbing up from the depths of their ego to learn to love their true selves? And then there’s LE SSERAFIM, whose very name is an anagram of “I’m fearless” and seems to suggest that their destiny is to overcome the obstacle of people and things surrounding them. Some women or idols might find that frightening, but they pull through all the same. It would be difficult to talk about such an intense fate using soft language. We can see this in (G)I-DLE’s hit song earlier this year, “TOMBOY” (“I’m a f***ing tomboy”) as well as the fact that BLACKPINK’s latest album, BORN PINK, includes three tracks marked “explicit.”
Their message is to the movement as plosives are to language. The way female idols have been using strong, straightforward language like the F-word isn’t a way to add a dash of sensationalism or appear tougher than they are. It’s rather a new world created through the endless friction between the strong desire to head in a different direction and a reality that doesn’t allow for this. This doesn’t apply simply within the K-pop scene, however, and includes the collective trials of everyone who experiences them. Take, for example, the prevalence of the term “girl crush” in K-pop of late as a term to describe strong female figures. There have of course been many uninspired releases capitalizing on the most superficial meaning of the phrase, but it’s been an incredibly useful way of convincing huge swaths of people to break away from the old stereotype that female artists in K-pop are limited in what they can achieve. Women have always been forced to use soft words and were subjected to dirty gazes, but thanks to three ideas—repeatedly questioning fundamental assumptions (Why can’t female idols do what they want?), the arrival of female idols raising their own voices to tell their stories and the new global generation of K-pop ready to listen—they can conquer those problems. In these turbulent times, nothing is clearer and more straightforward than words.