The Simmering Politics of (G)I-DLE’s “Wife”
The group’s provocative single is a sharp missile wrapped inside a bubble gum package.
True provocateurs are scarce in K-Pop. Rarely do I believe a group is actually as dangerous or as savage as they claim to be because K-Pop is a tightly run industry that leaves little room for disruption. But that is not the case with (G)I-DLE, a five member group under Cube Entertainment. They do not perform their roles; they are actually transgressive with their ideas. At their best, the women of (G)I-DLE can make you feel empowered or squirm with discomfort thanks to razor sharp lyrics.
(G)I-DLE’s transformation from a perfunctory girl group to an audacious one is thanks to the vision of Jeon So-yeon, the group’s leader and chief songwriter/ producer. Since she’s taken the reins in writing every track on the group’s 2021 album “I BURN”, (G)I-DLE have morphed into something edgier and wilier than any girl group in K-Pop. Take last year’s smash hit single “QUEENCARD”, an anthem of female empowerment, or the 2022 hit “TOMBOY” that gave the middle finger to subservience as examples. (G)I-DLE actually want to disturb your thoughts.
With each release, (G)I-DLE presents themselves as beautiful, flawless idols, but dig deeper and you’ll find something murkier swimming beneath the surface. To that end, I found “Nxde”, a single from 2022, to be the most vexing. “If you were expecting some rated R show/ I'm sorry, but that's not what we're showing,” Jeon snarls n the second verse. “For a refund, go that way.” With “Nxde”, IDLE laid bare their strategy: They would pretend to titillate you then confront you with your expectations of female hypersexuality.
By these standards, the title of (G)I-DLE’s new pre-release single “Wife” is provocative in title alone. In Korea, the birth rate is at its lowest in decades. Feminism is seen as a morally hateful word. Korean men, furious because of low wages, required military conscription and what they see as women taking their roles, have turned to misandry as an answer for their problems. Yet, as Hawon Jung points out, “More than 65 percent of companies listed on the Korean Exchange have no female executives.” The pay gap between men and women in a developed society, at 35 percent, is at its widest in Korea. Rising beneath the surface is a fierce resistance from Korean women on the topic of marriage or childbearing. Who wants to be a wife?
On the surface at least, Jeon’s lyrics for “Wife”, a pre-release single for the new album “2”, almost sounds like a children’s song: “I cook cream soup, taste is Coco Loco/ You want me your wife/ But she is mmm.” Fans have been critical of Jeon’s arbitrary use of English in her songwriting, and I can’t ever tell for certain if this is intentional. Yet the English is so bad on “Wife” that it feels almost political: “I clean your room/ Make it twinkle twinkle,” they sing as if they are talking to a man child. The Korean lyrics provide further context for this where Jeon sounds like a mother cooing to her baby: “Have a big bite, honey/ It's bad if you spit out your full stomach/ I'll give you some more, stop wiping your saliva/ You're all grown up now”.
The video is even more perplexing. Dressed identically in blue bobbed wigs and white outfits, the women play into a typical (racist) complaint about K-Pop: “I can’t tell any of them apart!” Here, perhaps in a male gaze, the women are interchangeable as perky, bubbly models, while their roles as caretakers remains the same. The song’s strange, disconcerting beat sounds more pronounced here as the women dance and smile brightly to lyrics about mothering a bastard. In one scene, comically or figuratively, a foot stomps out the women dancing. Interestingly, none of the lyrics are lip synched until the final verse when suddenly Jeon plunges a knife in: “Wife, I make you feel so high/ I make you feel like lie/ But I don't wanna/ Wife”,
(G)I-DLE’s styling for this comeback has been reminiscent of second generation K-Pop, particularly groups like 2NE1 or T-ARA. This was a time when human rights in the industry were almost non-existent and the thought of a woman controlling her career was unthinkable. But (G)I-DLE's interest in playing with history by mixing in their ballsy commentary is infused in this track. “Wife”, then, feels like the group’s most cutting work yet. “I don’t wanna be your wife,” they declare to a society that asks why women aren’t married by 30 or that blames women for the problems men are facing. By packaging the empowered message in cheerful production that sounds straight from the year 2012, it’s a missile wrapped in a bubble gum package.
