I’m back with another K-pop album review, but this time, it’s one that didn’t quite meet my expectations.
An album has dropped from one of my favorite girl groups, whom I have yet to even talk about – not my typical Red Velvet.
So this time, this review is about (G)-Idle’s (pronounced as just Idle) new full comeback since May of 2023, which is quite a time gap for K-pop, but fans were still being fed the occasional music. This new album is titled “2” and was released on Jan. 29, 2024. Perhaps, it is called “2” because almost all the songs are around two minutes long, with the longest song on the entire album being three minutes and ten seconds.
The first song I want to talk about is the pre-release, which was released eight days before the rest of the album was released, called “Wife.” This song isn’t necessarily good, it’s just really catchy and overall it’s literally camp – as camp as it can get. When I first saw the music video for this song I almost lost it, witnessing five women come into view with atrocious neon blue bobs, instantly making me take a second to comprehend what I was seeing.
Then, the song began; and it definitely began. I was taken aback and my ears slightly shriveled up. I wanted to convince myself that this was for some weird ad, but alas, it was not. The first lyrics in this song are, “I cook cream soup, taste is Cocoloco,” like, what does that even mean (G)-Idle? The word Cocoloco doesn’t even exist, and it’s capitalized for whatever reason.
It is an entertaining song, and subjectively not that good, but it must be the K-pop stan curse that makes me love horrible-sounding music. “Wife” is 98% a song I would rather die than play out loud in a public place, so not the best. However, it’s fun and the camp vibe makes it up for the sound.
“Vision” is the fourth song on the tracklist of “2,” and it is the best and my favorite song on this entire album – and probably one of my favorites of (G)-Idle’s. The instant I heard the instrumentals and the weird synthesized in the background, I knew I was going to be obsessed with this song.
I seriously love this song, the soft whispering voices of Minnie and Miyeon really make this whole song – especially Minnie. In my opinion, this song was made for Minnie and her unique vocal color. It’s just so lovely and happy to listen to, I always have to do a little dance to it. “Vision” is more of a vocal-heavy song, so I wasn’t very happy with the out-of-place ‘rap’ parts, it sorta ruined the vibe. But still, it is a very enjoyable song and one of my all-time favorites from Soyeon.
Now, it’s time for the title track, the big one. When I first saw the trailer for this song, I was blown away by how big their budget was, about 1.1 billion South Korean won – roughly around $830,000 dollars. That isn’t necessarily a huge budget in comparison to Western artists, but for a girl group that gets little support from their company, but manages themselves and produces a lot of their own music, it’s pretty admirable. It also explains why they all took so many different gigs from modeling to ad endorsements between the break – they had to make the money somehow since they are single-handedly keeping Cube Entertainment from going bankrupt.
Getting off topic, the title track is titled as “Super Lady,” and it has that feminine empowerment in this song. It’s like if “I Am the Best” by 2NE1 (pronounced as twenty-one), and “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyonce had a baby. I really like the instrumentals in this song, they’re very easy to follow and bob your head to, but that’s pretty much it. I like the pre-chorus leading up to the chorus, but the second that chorus hits, I lose interest. This song was one of their biggest lacking title-tracks, which disappointed me, I had so much hope for it. Not to mention, the song is only two minutes and 40 seconds long, so you don’t even get time to process the music. To be honest, it just reminds me of some sort of odd phone advertisement with its vibe, not the greatest.
The last song I want to talk about is “Revenge,” which, in my opinion, should have been the title track instead. This song just screams Idle all over it, it gives off the same vibe as “Senorita,” a past song of theirs. I can already envision a music video to this song, a very chaotic but mesmerizing picture.
I understand the message and image Soyeon wanted to send with “Super-Lady, “ but seriously, this song is so much better and makes more sense as a title track and not a B-side. It is just so much more catchy and enjoyable to listen to the instrumentals and vocals, and the girls all make this song what it is. I mean, it starts with a lighter lighting a cigarette, that’s pretty baddie behavior (not endorsing the use of nicotine products), but the sound is still a cool feature to add at the beginning. I could lowkey see this on some sort of movie soundtrack, maybe like “Oceans 8” because it screams strong women.
Overall, this is sadly not the greatest album released by the girls, and it’s honestly kinda disappointing compared to their previous releases. I believe that if the songs were all more than two minutes then maybe I would have time to properly digest the song, but alas, not this time. Hopefully, the K-pop curse will fully take hold of me and then in a few more weeks I will love the entire album, but that has not yet happened. So, for now, I will give this entire album about a 3/5 Spartan heads.