But what is her stance on the night?

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Patrick St. Michel: South Korea did elect their first female president last year, but that is not as progressive as the lyrics to this Girl’s Day song imply. Park Geun-hye was the most conservative candidate during that election, one coming from a political family (her father was often accused of being a dictator when he was president). In terms of “Female President,” mentioning the female president is just a cheap way of getting extra attention. Though I don’t blame them, because this yelpy pop-meets-rock number has been done way better by 4Minute many times over.
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Madeleine Lee: The way I feel about “Female President” is similar to the way I feel about Park Geun-hye. It certainly sounds empowering, and it’s nice to hear a group of girls proudly declare “Our country’s president is female” on the gang-vocal chorus. But the more I examine it — or rather, the more I examine how others examine it — it’s clear that this is not meant to challenge the status quo, but uphold it. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s a banger, but when I listen to it I can’t help but feel a little pandered to, and a little cheated of what could’ve been a moment to celebrate.
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Alfred Soto: Other than the plunk of boxed drums and power chord strumming, undistinguished will to power K-Pop.
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Brad Shoup: Ah, is this how “Wings” sounded to those who totally got “Wings” the first go-round?
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “If a girl kisses first, she gets arrested or what? / You can start first!” Bang Minah sings these words in a way that’s all urgency and little else. If her delivery was notated on a staff, it would probably be all exclamation marks. It’s a wonderful moment, so confidently and triumphantly performed that the song cuts out, happy to end it there and call it a day. But it happily continues, full of ideas — Neptunes-esque digital horns, stadium-rock guitars, accapella catwalk sass — that never overpower each other or the group’s performances.
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Jonathan Bogart: Begins Cheap Trick, ends Scorpions, and contains huge heaping spoonfuls of En Vogue, Madonna, and Saint Whitney in the middle. (Not identifying any compositional DNA, just mapping my own neural connections.) I take it there are lyrics, but do there need to be? The towering force and rhythmic playfulness here tell their own story.
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David Lee: “Footloose” overhauled using “Shut Up and Drive” as the blueprint.
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Iain Mew: Thanks to Sonya for pointing me towards something interesting which I hadn’t quite stumbled across — in a conversation I was positing a recent trend between this, Hello Venus’ winning “Do You Want Some Tea?” and 4Minute’s “Is It Poppin’?”, thinking of K-Pop songs that almost completely dispense with English lyrics, and she assumed that I meant songs where the woman takes the lead in a relationship, which the first two particularly go comparatively far with. It’s one of those times when I wish I understood more of the context than I do, because I wonder if the two are linked and the tricky demands of pitching such sentiments (even with a female head of state in supporting evidence) make it necessary to stick to Korean or if it’s coincidence and I’m drawing way too much into a small sample size. Such speculation aside, this is the least interesting song of the three, unfortunately, not least because its blandness is only emphasised by comparison to the Little Mix song it shares a great deal with.
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