“Excusez-moi, to all of you who are sitting here/If you were expecting some rated R show/Oh I’m sorry, but that’s not what we’re showing”
These are the lyrics of “Nxde” released by girl group “(G)I-DLE” on Oct 17th. They even released teaser photos with a sexy concept ahead of the release of their 5th mini-album “I love”, but the image that the public expected was beautifully reversed.
At the press conference held at CGV Cheongdam Cinecity in Seoul on the day of the album’s release, leader Soyeon said, “When you see the word ‘nude’, you could think ‘Isn’t it too sexual?’ However, I thought of it as ‘being my true self’ rather than ‘being naked’. My bare face without makeup on is my real face, isn’t it? That’s what ‘nude’ meant to me.”
That’s why the English spelling is “Nxde” rather than “Nude”. Thanks to this unconventionality, “Nxde” pushed out Zico’s “New thing”, which had been in power for nearly a month, and topped music charts such as Melon.
The music video reveals their intentions more clearly. All five members dyed their hair blonde and wore pin-up girl-like costumes on stage reminiscent of “Moulin Rouge!”. Soyeon, who was in charge of producing the album, shared, “Marilyn Monroe was labeled as a blonde sex symbol in the past, but I came to think that the real her would have been different from what the public thought of her. I heard that she was actually highly intellectual and liked to read philosophical books. In a similar vein, people have a particular image of us as we are publicly known celebrities. We wanted to break that stereotype and show our true selves by paying homage to Marilyn Monroe.” At the end of the video, there is even a scene that seems to pay homage to British graffiti artist Banksy, who crushes the works displayed in the museum as people flock to them.
Source: joongang
