Release Date: January 29, 2024
Track Listing
- Super Lady
- Revenge
- Doll
- Vision
- 7Days
- Fate
- Rollie
- Wife
Review
After a short stint in America with their first English language EP, Heat (G), I-DLE returned to releasing music in Korea with their second full-length album titled 2.
The pre-release track Wife dropped on January 22, 2024, a week before the release of the entire album. It’s a track with a banging beat but is dragged down by nonsensical and sometimes indecipherable English lyrics. Bad Konglish is a staple of K-pop, so long-time listeners will not be phased by this.
However, it does become challenging to comprehend what Wife is about when fully translated into English. But the gist of the song is poking fun at the expectations of the ideal Korean wife with a few bars about oral sex thrown in for fun.
On the other hand, 2‘s title track, Super Lady, is straightforward to understand since it has Grrrl Power written all over it. So much that the song could be mistaken for something from EVERGLOW. Is that a good thing? That depends on whether you like those types of songs. There also seem to be some clever shoutouts to aespa, IVE, and LE SSERAFIM in the lyrics of Super Lady. So if you’re down with groups showing each other love, there you go.
As for the other six tracks, these are the quality expected of a Korean (G)I-DLE release. At least one member of (G)I-DLE has contributed to the composition or lyrics of every song on 2, helping put their unique stamp on the album.
The songs that stood out to me the most were Doll and Rollie. I guess I have a thing for whatever Yuqi is involved in, as her songs end up being pretty good. Vision also left an impression on me. It’s the one track on the album that differs the most sonically with (G)I-DLE jumping in on the Jersey Club trend.
Overall, 2 is a great album, and more than atones for the bad taste in the mouth (G)I-DLE’s English language album left last year.