WIFE
(G)I-DLE are an interesting case study in the K-pop realm: Their ethos seems to have been that which foregrounded the overly-bombastic but self-affirming narratives of groups like your Itzys and Le Sserafims, while also being a sonic entity dead-set on reworking many, many popular production trends. In this sense, they’re incredibly flexible, but a lot of the final outcomes can leave a bit to be desired, even in the presence of an occasional hard-hitting, skull-smashing banger like Tomboy or My Bag. (Granted, you’d just have to trudge through a lot of pretty boilerplate, milquetoast pop that makes you wonder what American singer they’re buying demos and b-sides from.)
Their most recent long-form (-ish…) release in the form of their second full-length album cleverly titled 2 wasn’t really exempt from the host of shortcomings and quality-marring quirks of the IDLE repertoire. Even for a title track as monumentally anthemic as Super Lady, there’s a harrowing and sad but amusing irony to Soyeon’s sentiments about the track—even if I’d agree with her. A handful of passable electro- and synth-driven pop tracks with the occasional pseudo-standout (I am particularly fond of Vision and 7Days), but nothing quite as remarkable, awe-inspiring, and interest-grabbing as the closer, Wife.
Wife, released as a pre-release single for 2, is the record’s one true gem. Kicked off with a pretty directionless guitar noodle and a snarky “Hello” from Soyeon, listeners are quickly catapulted into a barrage of overly-compressed and incessantly punchy percussion. Regardless of your choice of equipment, the kick and snare drums will force a party into your environment. Simple angular synth patterns line the verses and choruses, and a couple of other production blemishes turn up here and there, and that’s pretty much it for the instrumental lining. In itself, it’s effective, even if some people might find it a bit ironic and/or fascinating that more people were involved in the song’s creation than there are distinct instrumental elements in the song’s final master.
It’s a combination of the very in-your-face instrumental with the in-your-face message. As par for the course for IDLE, there’s this underlying inkling of self-empowerment, and on Wife, it takes form through an incessantly bombastic and overblown satirical take on trad-wife dynamics. There’s not much sugar coating or euphemizing (at least by K-pop standards): Soyeon and Minnie spend an entire verse likening a (co-)dependent husband to a dependent, neurally-underdeveloped infant (“I’ll give you some more, stop wiping your saliva / You’re all grown up now […] Kiss carefully and eat boldly / Tell me how it tastes”). If you speak English as a native language, that only sort of makes sense. As an affective piece, it’s artistic gold.
The song’s main refrain of “cook[ing] cream soup” whose taste is “Coco Loco” is already a spotlight-stealer. IDLE have never been the strongest vocalists on the front of sheer melody and “euphony,” but Wife ‘s adherence to a mostly sing-rap style not only serves to mask the usual “weaknesses” the group has on this front, but also acts as an affective tool to really drive down the “authority” imbued in this 2-minute statement. Yuqi’s vocal timbre in particular works exceedingly well to drive down the domineering message of the song. It’s a stark contrast with Soyeon’s and Miyeon’s earlier performances in the song, almost as if the gradual timbral shifts per chorus act as an incremental increase in frustration (if not altogether a “rediscovery” of autonomy) with an incompetent partner.
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There’s an argument for the song’s message being somewhat patronizing and unnecessarily domineering over the implicit narrator’s partner, but, who are we kidding, that’s the joy of it, if not the point altogether: To poke fun at their incompetence and take a jab at the all-too-frequent disadvantagings their “implicit” kind projects onto women. Maybe a bit archaic and conventional in its portrayal of a normative husband-wife dynamic, but, the satire works that way. It’s exactly humorous and almost liberating to be able to poke fun at a “superior” sect of people who still require that their “Coco Loco”-flavored soup be cooked for them or their room be cleaned “so twinkle twinkle” for them. This is the group of people you trust with, well, everything else in the world?
The kicker to all of this is that everything this song sort of “stands against” was reinforced by it being banned by KBS for their broadcasted performances. On one hand, there’s a massive “fuck you!” to be hauled at them for stripping us of some potentially really fun fancams and performance videos. (There are, however, a number of off-broadcast videos that lament the impact this has had on IDLE’s fanbase.) On the other, you could imagine how all the hypocrisy discourse about this song being barred from broadcasting would turn out—why ban this and not any number of x, y, z tracks that one could arguably classify as “worse” on the front of “being appropriate?” (What the hell does that even mean?)
With all this contextual discussion, you have one of the few fundamentally unique corollaries of this song: The ideological discourse it spurs. A song titled “Wife” from a K-pop girl group particularly popular (if not altogether notorious) for feminist-fueled self-empowerment anthems being pushed into an industry rife with misogynistic normatives and standards? The premise and context of this song was enough to make it lack an ounce of “surprisingness” when you now have people discussing critical theory about performativity vis-à-vis gender. (You may think of your Kristevas or Butlers, but that’s a discussion for another article…)
Regardless of the subjective “quality” of the track, you can’t deny that it at least works as a message. It’s so god damned amusing and fascinating, while also being food for thought. Even thinking about a lot of the discursive points tackled in this article and very crudely, broadly, and generalistically explaining it should be enough to prove its affective success. For as “unserious” and “silly” as it may be, it unpacks quite a lot of dynamics-driven discourse that, sure, might not be what one might go to K-pop for, but, for more socially “active” folks, it might be a bit disingenuous to see such a popular medium being wasted on talking about nothing but heavily-mediated surface-level self-empowerment anthems.
The peak of what many consider to be “unserious” (which I don’t think is meant completely pejoratively) is a snarky, snappy track filled with some of the most [adamantly] jarring line juxtapositions within a single verse (Yuqi and Shuhua’s dynamic in the second verse is truly something …); a track with one of the most technically simplistic production standards and elements; a track featuring every little superficial element that performative and uninformed “mid”-fetishizing YouTube and TikTok “critics” would hate.
I’ve had a tendency to categorize many IDLE songs as being a “slap to the face”, and not a very pleasant one at that. The same could be said for Wife, but it’s a perfect slap to the face for, well, everyone this time. Maybe not everyone’s angry or pained by it—though, I’m sure there’s no shortage of people who might find some subjective dissatisfaction with the song purely on the merits (or lack thereof) of its production and songwriting prowess—but, for the people it seems to have been trying to be a deliberate slap in the face to, Wife succeeds at doing that, and then some. If you’re still not swayed, I quote Shuhua’s closing lines from verse 2: “If you get it now, you should try it now.”
24/05/31
Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com on May 31, 2024.
