Live Review: 원더걸스 (Wonder Girls) ‘I Feel You’ (Official Video)

If there’s one video you watch today make it this one. It opens with a girl sitting on the toilet and as she unzips the flies to her leather hot pants, what do we find inside? Only the hottest, freshest, catchiest slice of K-pop goodness we’ve heard since…well, since Gangnam Style.

After a near three-year hiatus, K-pop babes WONDER GIRLS are back with a pitch-perfect ode to that nostalgic 80s synth rock that has informed pretty much every pop/house hit ever since.

The retro 80s styling is on point, and the girls (Yenny, Yubin, Sunmi and Lim) effortlessly work the stage with hair flicks and nonchalant pouts as disco lights go berserk above them. The video features slim-line swimsuits, rollaerblades and polaroids, a funk accordion and keytar here and there. Looking like a quad of K-pop Bond girls, the whole video looks like it was shot specifically for VHS. There’s sing-a-long subtitles with some multilingual bits so that we can join in at the chorus with a few ‘I feel you’s and ‘baby’s. Who knew that the Korean language was sexier than speaking French?

Lyrically it’s pretty much the same as all pop content around the world, whether that’s K-pop, J-pop, Canto-pop, or just your boring old Western pop, but it’s just a tad catchier than what I’m used to hearing.

Wonder Girls were the first ever K-pop girl group to chart on the Billboard Top 100 with their smash global hit ‘Nobody’, in 2009. They’ve dealt with member switch ups, a marriage announcement and a three-year hiatus but they’re back, as a foursome, and truly better than ever.

The new album is titled REBOOT, with ‘I Feel You’ as the throwback lead track from the record. The girls had a hand in the making of all 12 songs on the album, and their commitment to their retro sonic concept is strong. Even the video is branded from the 80s with the classic MTV logo flipped over to make it a WTV…Wonder TV?

‘I Feel You’ has got that throwback feel that sounds so delicious from the car to the beach to the club, but with the perfect amount of contemporary riffs and trills and drum beats to make you keep pressing rewind.

Words by Katie Rowley

LISTEN TO MORE MUSIC HERE

SEE MORE:

A.G. COOK ‘DROP FM’ FT. HANNAH DIAMOND

BLOOD DIAMONDS ‘PHONE SEX’ FT GRIMES