The Singles Jukebox

Time to find out once and for all — like, for real this time — who HATES FUN!

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[6.29]

Kayla Beardslee: Dumb bitches assemble (affectionate). “Queencard” is kind of embarrassing to defend (you’re going to bat for the boob and booty hot song? really?), but if you listen to it enough, it becomes impossible to deny that it’s also kind of a banger. It would be a different matter if the production and topline weren’t pulling their weight, but that bassline rips, and those line-to-line handoffs between all five members in the first verse get me every time. It also helps that this song comes from by far the best album (G)I-DLE has ever put out: when “Queencard” is placed next to the beautiful, dreamy B-side “Paradise” or the sinister-sexy “Lucid,” its goofiness seems less like actual vapidity and more like Soyeon intentionally fucking around because she knows it’s good to have a little fun and gas yourself up sometimes. Like, look me in the eyes and tell me it’s not high performance art to release “Tomboy” and “Queencard” (and “Nxde”!) within a year of one another. I can get on board with a bit of silliness in exchange for the album I’ve been waiting for (G)I-DLE to make since I first discovered them — which, as it happens, was when the Jukebox covered “Uh Oh” back in 2019. What a lovely and emotionally nuanced full-circle moment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to twerking on the runway.
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Crystal Leww: MY BOOB AND BUTT IS HOT MY BOOB AND BUTT IS HOT MY BOOB AND BUTT IS HOT MY BOOB AND BUTT IS HOT MY BOOB AND BUTT IS HOT 
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Katherine St Asaph: Vintage Fergie.
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Harlan Talib Ockey: Ridiculous.
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Tara Hillegeist: As an object lesson in one of pop music’s golden rules — “unfuckwithable production can save unforgivable lyrics every time” — “Queencard” ticks all the bases. Embarrassing lines like “twerking on the runway” and “sexy like Kim Kardashian” that not even Meghan Trainor could’ve written with a straight face completely fail to dent that supple bassline and synth-bleep driven stomp of a beat. There isn’t a single word of this song worth dignifying with a sincere analysis; there isn’t a single word of this song that matters while the squelched-alarm bubble and squeak of a melody and irrepressible line delivery are still making the brain jiggle like so much excited jelly under their sonic assault. This is a missive from the same school of thought that produced “Song 2“: a heady slab of music so thoroughly stupid yet sneeringly self-confident about it, hearing it excites the listener enough to mistake it for the work of a frustrated genius, instead. I cannot take its message seriously without taking insult. I can’t stop pressing repeat.
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Will Adams: So many delightfully dumb lines, it’s hard to choose a favorite. I wish the music had been equally as silly, as opposed to whatever Jonas Brothers purgatory it currently exists in.
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Alfred Soto: Elements from Pussycat Dolls and Meghan Trainor drift and fade with the attention span.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: This quintet’s energy is infectious enough to take “Queencard” (great title) to the finish line, but there’s no getting past the backing track. Envision every Black Friday/post-Christmas/commercial on TV, strip the jaunty musical beds from their flatscreen-deal context, then paste them one after the other. I’m sorry, but GO TO PRISON!!!
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Nortey Dowuona: Pop rock as an aesthetic is actually a good thing to be pilfering from. It’s not novel or boundary pushing in the slightest, but after the last decade of everything stealing from rap — the structures, the adlibs, the flows, the kicks, snares, hi-hats and percussion, the poses, the clothing — and miserably failing to even slightly capture the same lightning strike… maybe don’t be bothered to try. I’ve been listening to What Had Happened Was with Questlove, and at each turn I grow more frustrated by the fact that neither he nor Black Thought ever cottoned on to the giant possibilities of being an actual band, only producing musical phrases to be looped in the least interactive or vivid way. And this song, which is a solid approximation of 2005 pop rock and 2011 piss-take raps, just frustrates me cuz it feels like Jeon So-yeon, the group’s Questlove, has the same problem; being able to make poppy Shafiq Husayn records and settling for Max Martin throwaways.
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Joshua Minsoo Kim: How long has it been since we’ve had an honest-to-god hook song? You could blame it on shifting musical trends, but ever since K-pop made it big in the West, lyrics have had to start making sense. This means we’ve been deprived of the joy that comes with wonky English. The lyrics are especially camp on “Queencard,” but it goes beyond that: it’s the total surrendering of a topline to phrasing and rhythm. Case in point: “My boob and booty” has syllabic parallels with “I’m top” and “twerking.” There’s also a slick maneuvering between English and Korean here, with (G)I-DLE selecting the words that sound best — “ppoppo” is way more fun than “kiss,” and “I’m cute” can be delivered with more sass than the same phrase in Korean. “Queencard” may not be a term the average American knows, but it doesn’t matter: it’s the sort of nonsense word that you can repeat incessantly, much like we all did with “gee” 14 years ago. To top it off, (G)I-DLE actually sound like they’re enjoying themselves instead of delivering a Serious Message. We may never get a song like this again.
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David Moore: There’s boob and booty and twerking in this one, sure, but the most exhilarating part of the whole thing is when the phrase “I’m a queencard” in the chorus devolves into uncanny syllables, like Jell-O starting to go runny in the sun, in a way doesn’t just tell you what a queencard is, but really points to it — this is a queencard. I’m reminded that K-pop isn’t just multilingual, but often meta-lingual in the way that so much (all?) good pop is, refusing to let words get by as mere signifiers and forcing us to reckon with words at the phonemic, molecular level. How wild is it that the entire basis of our civilization is built on these funky noises we make with our mouths and tongues and lungs and noses and throats? I think that’s neat.
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Kat Stevens: I worry that she’s going to lose a lot of money at poker.
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Michael Hong: Look, Soyeon’s English lyrics are often questionable, and it doesn’t help that each member seems to drop syllables. She’s exaggerated her “rapping” voice to be sharper and more piercing, and the lyric “look so cool, look so sexy like Kim Kardashian (uh) / look so cute, look so pretty like Ariana” fits awkwardly in the meter and is a bit reductive of each (but also your bad if you expected a nuanced feminist take from the group that brought you “Nxde“). And the entire thing is just a Valley Girl rip of “Song 2” by Blur. And yet, 4 + 4 is still:
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Brad Shoup: The pre-chorus is really interesting, how it teeters on the rim of Meghan Trainor maltshop-pop without ever falling in. It’s a nice break from the spy-theme slink that dominates this.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Referencing Ariana Grande directly feels like giving away the game — this is some real Dangerous Woman shit, a maximalist pop barrage that seems to operate on the principle that if you make enough baffling aesthetic and lyrical decisions it’ll loop back to sense eventually. Joke’s on me — they’re right! This sounds like how I imagine getting shot out of a T-shirt cannon would feel.
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Michelle Myers: Shuhua is a queencard. Soyeon is squeak-rapping like she’s HyunA’s daughter. Minnie is hosting a blue champagne party and doing her best Debbie Harry impression. Miyeon hard carries the pre-chorus. Yuqi is jamming the phrase “sexy like Kim Kardashian” into five syllables. She’s top. She’s twerking on the runway.
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Anna Katrina Lockwood: “I’m twerking on the runway” has got to be in the top five greatest stunt English lines in K-pop history. (G)I-DLE have always had oodles of talent and charisma, but “Queencard,” like last year’s “Tomboy,” has the confidence of maturity and a rare sense of unfettered enjoyment. Nobody’s had such a good time in a music video since GD and TOP went to the club. Speaking of YG party songs, of course this is reminiscent of that format—though as others have pointed out, it lacks the true YG party chorus to close. There are a few better precedents in Cube’s own history, which are combined effectively with a vaguely punk rock sound and a sensitive handful of blog house references. Part of the magic has to be the judicious editing Soyeon has applied here — “Queencard” is a blisteringly tight 2:41, far from the bloat often befalling her earlier compositions. It’s fun, you can shout along to it, there’s a funny little dance, there are at least three melodies I’ve had stuck in my head–it’s some good fucking K-pop. 
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