Guess what Gain told us after we begged her to rename this song “Invisible”?
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[5.73]
Anthony Easton: This is the least convincing Fuck You in history. I am not sure if this is ironic or just complacent. I’m going to score it on the less knowing side of that spectrum.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: It’s the Lily Allen ploy again: plopping “fuck” into a track that’s too bland on its own.
[5]
Iain Mew: The swearing is there in full, but the rest of the track has the spirit of those “x”s. There’s an awkward stand-off feel between Gain and Bumkey, and the music is similarly uncomfortable to match the lyrical ambiguity, but it never gets uncomfortable enough to make anything of the tension. The masked hiss of what might be cymbals is like knives being sheathed.
[4]
Jessica Doyle: In Grenoble we used two different languages to scold my host mother’s then-five-year-old grandson: if he was just getting on our nerves, we’d groan, “Arrête.” But if he was about to put himself in danger, it was, “Stop!” English words as a decorative element is nothing new in K-pop; but this had me wondering if swearing in English somehow has more power than its Korean equivalent. I don’t think so, but the desperation in Gain’s indrawn breath, as if she’s trying to shake them off the slow path to destruction all by herself, has me wondering.
[7]
Cédric Le Merrer: This starts with a jaunty acoustic guitar, promising the kind of light romance usually found in K-pop girl-boy duets, but doesn’t go there at all. Looking up the lyrics confirmed what I’d gleaned from Gain’s desperate sultriness, from the rather strange “ooh-ooh” harmonies, from Bumkey’s creepy fedora tipping vibe: there’s some fucked up date-rapey dynamic going on, too complex and nuanced to make this comfortable background music for me (especially those moment when both singers harmonize together — great way of conveying the situation’s complexity musically). After the awesome self pleasure paean that was “Bloom,” this definitely makes Gain one of those rare pop stars tackling sex like an adult.
[9]
Madeleine Lee: It’s clear what she wants (or doesn’t want), and his constant interjections from a different script make it just as clear why she can’t always get what she wants, why she might need to hear a woman’s voice on the radio say the words, “Fuck you, I don’t want it now.” It’s clear what the cinema audience wants (or is being led to want), too. But it’s unclear what the song itself wants. I have a sinking feeling that having found an attention-grabbing chorus and a nice groove, it’s now content to just hang on for as many repeats of the cycle as possible — and where the climax of the song should be, the turning point of its story, there’s only the lyric, “This can never really end.”
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: Gain’s latest single, “Truth Or Dare,” has been getting a lot of attention because it sounds hyper similar to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” It’s intentional — the video reveals this — and a lot of people have spent a fair amount of digital space arguing about what it all means. It has made me rethink her first single from this year, “Fxxk U.” K-Pop borrows sonic ideas from Western pop — a fact pointed out in most intros to the country’s music back when that was fashionable — but that’s partially because Western pop is inescapable. So why can’t K-Pop artists flip those songs around? “Fxxk U” doesn’t bear the same sonic resemblance that “Truth or Dare” has — it is deceptively slinky, punctuated by those “wooos” in the verses — yet I read that title and I think about Cee-Lo Green. Whereas that is a bombastic track centered around pettiness, Gain reverses everything, making something that sounds far more reserved yet about abuse. It’s a song far more deserving of that expletive, and a very smart track at that.
[8]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Love and hate tie up together in this lounge-jazz tale of tumultuous relations, with awkwardly-phrased cursing becoming an affirmation. It’s a volatile song but it doesn’t matter — these kids still sound boring, tumult or no.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The guitar plays a melody line reminiscent of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again,” but archness is beyond the vocal. “Fxxk” isn’t transgressive anymore. It isn’t even cute.
[4]
David Sheffieck: The winning (if apparently at odds with the lyric) interplay between Gain’s effervescent vocal and Bumkey’s crooning almost — almost — redeems the by-the-numbers production. If I was sitting in an airport lounge in the late ’70s, eating chicken kiev and waiting for boarding to be announced, this is what I’d expect to hear over the PA.
[6]
Brad Shoup: I think they’re going off the “Do It Again” MIDI: that’s rad. So are the backing vocals in the verse, a disgusted, stinking wind of “eeeh-eeeh-eeeh”s. Not all the fucks land, but the ones that do hit like an argument cut off for the sake of sanity.
[7]