New Jeans’ ‘Cookie’ with a hidden sexual innuendo and ADOR’s immature way of handling the situation
“Min Hee-jin’s girl group” New Jeans’ track “Cookie” become controversial due to its sexual charged lyrics while the singing members are all underaged.
New Jeans, a girl group that just debuted a month ago with an average age of 17.6, have been breaking K-pop’s classic formula and changed the idol industry with their debut, setting a series of new records under their name.
The lovely and innocent members that look like a family girl group of five sisters, and trendy songs that remind fans of the 1st idol generation in the 1990s, captivated the eyes and ears of K-pop fans both inside and outside of Korea.
The fact that New Jeans is a syndrome cannot be denied as they are doing extremely well in terms of public popularity, digital sales, album sales and YouTube views, proving their worth.
However, New Jeans currently has a fatal weakness, which is the controversy over the sensitive lyrics of the third title song of their debut album, “Cookie.” Along with the immature response from their agency ADOR, the company failed to resolve the controversy.
The controversy over “Cookie” began among New Jeans’ overseas fans and led to criticism from professional interpreters. In other countries, “Cookie” is used as a slang for genitalia, so they claimed it is inappropriate for “minors” like New Jeans to sing such a song.
They aren’t just nitpicking with the word “cookie”. It was argued that the overall context of the lyrics of “Cookie” such as “Made a little cookie/It’s too soft/I can’t stop thinking about it,” “With chocolate chips, you know I wanna sprinkle it all over/I want to make you lose your appetite,” “I want to see you more,” and “Made a little cookie/Come and take a lookie/Only at my house, come over and play.”
ADOR has issued about 30 articles related to its position about this. They claimed they had none of that intention, and the unpredictable slang is not a standard language that everyone should know and learn.
If you search for “Cookie slang” on Google, it says it’s a slang that’s been used since the 1970s.
ADOR said it has confirmed with a number of English literature PhDs, interpreters and translation experts, native speakers and foreigners. “It is not a concept that is usually used, and it is likely to change depending on the perception of the person.” It also said that because slang has different meanings depending on culture, region, and history, the criteria for judging inappropriate contents are ambiguous. From this point of view, it is difficult for any song lyrics to be free from various disputes.
“Fortunately, most of those who make such forced claims are packing their purpose as protecting the underaged members,” ADOR said. “The noise generated from this situation is in no way positive for the team, but those who maintain the attitude that ‘the answer is already set’ still refuse to listen to our long explanation.”
There is bound to be misleading details in these unnecessarily long writings. In fact, the main content is simple and clear, but the words just get longer and turn into emotional writing as if they needed an excuse. ADOR judged the controversy over “Cookie” as a scandal someone made up to forcibly drag New Jeans down. Their statement, which failed to accept the legitimate criticism and shows how they was forced to react, ended up in the audience’s disappointment.
The start of the “Cookie” controversy was from the fans’ affection for New Jeans. It was a concern from foreign fans about the sexual slang, and it was a defensive reaction of the public who reacted sensitively to the problem of sexual objectification of minors. Even when there was no such intention of “Cookie” as ADOR claimed in its position, if many feel uncomfortable with the result like this, the lyrics are miswritten.
Because of that, ADOR’s emotional response becomes even more disappointing. Are they trying to prove that there is no problem with the lyrics, the management did nothing wrong, and only the public’s interpretation is wrong? Failure to consider such controversy in the first place is not an excuse they should be using. Isn’t it their role to judge and consider the numerous risks that exist?
In particular, “New Jeans” is a valuable brand that Min Hee-jin introduces for the first time under her label after leaving SM. If she didn’t expect the “Cookie” controversy, there’s nothing more to expect from her from now on.
They said it’s an earring if you wear it on your ear, and a nose ring if you wear it on your nose. There are fans who go along with ADOR’s long statement, and some who still can’t understand it, but they still want to move on because of their affection for New Jeans. As New Jeans is a team that is receiving attention from both in and out of Korea, fans hope that ADOR will be more responsible, listen to various opinions before acting and be more careful in the future.
Source: daum
