And, as always, we end up in South Korea…

[Video][Website]
[6.43]

Madeleine Lee: In the year of the female president, the adage “All men are wolves” (or “dogs,” translated more colloquially) has taken off in Korea. Whether spoken as a boast or a warning, the message is the same: boys will be boys, so girls, watch what you wear and what you do. Enter Lee Hyori, herself no great fan of the female presidency, who’s written a song about girls who wear and do what they want over a Norwegian Dick Dale-lite beat. But this is not a retort or a revenge fantasy; that would make it about the men. Just listen to the overwhelmingly female fanchants for Hyori’s comeback stage. This is a song for the bad, bad, bad, bad girls themselves: cool like surf rock and hot like mambo, talking shit but still cute, not hiding their wits and smarts, “showing a little skin to be sexy.” One caveat: the virgin/whore tropes of the lyrics are regrettable, but all lobbed bombs lose accuracy for the sake of impact.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: There’s an extra sneer here not usually found in similarly retro-focused pop songs (within K-Pop, the best example now would be Lee-Hi). That the guitar sounds like it’s actually intruding here — popping in to fuck up the furniture — helps a lot, as does the fact that Lee Hyori has been in the game long enough where she doesn’t have to prove anything, which means she can be more playful with her voice (“ba-ba-ba-bad girls”).
[8]

Iain Mew: First, “Bad Girls” is one of those songs that has only half the stature without its video, so watch that. However, the song does already have its own impressive line of anger-cloaked-in-cartoon exaggeration, the chorus p-p-p-pops, there’s some mean surf guitar, and Hyori is still clearly a star.
[7]

Anthony Easton: The oh oh ohs are just too sweet and lovely-sounding to be part of any track named “Bad Girls”.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Like the Problem Child-indebted video, this sort of go-go raveup is an easy idea that doesn’t offer much in its defense. Certainly not Hyori, who’s not a great singer, but is too professional to give “Bad Girls” a yé-yé gloss. The guitarist tries to make things interesting with twangy triplets and wicked pipelines, but the drummer’s just trying to make it out before the bars close. Judging from the result, I’d say he did.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Perhaps because I’ve been pairing it in my head with CL’s “The Baddest Female,” which is an [8] or a [9], I’ve let my interest in this stagnate; but it’s still a very good song, smuggling her demand for a broader range of allowable femininity into her openly goofy music and (especially) video. Silliness, of course, has long been one of the most underutilized weapons in destabilizing conventional power dynamics, at least in music; and Hyori is a master at both silliness and at letting the mask slip momentarily to force us to see the seriousness underneath. R-E-S-P-E-C-T, is, after all, what everyone who don’t give a damn about their bad reputation still demands.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Glance at Dsign Music’s bewildering credits, most of which are unknown to Anglophone audiences. Their sound consists of James Bond atmospherics, busy guitar, and nagging harmonies. I hear Bloodshy & Avant with lousy drums and loud hi-hats.
[5]