RaeRae Reacts

“Girls Will Be Girls” gives ITZY a ruined world, a mysterious crow, five women fighting their way back to one another, and choreography sharp enough to cut through concrete. The music video has a whole film trapped inside it. The song has a very good dance break trapped inside a chorus that refuses to stop repeating its résumé.

The song first: built for a stage, slightly underfed as a recording

The verses come in with real momentum. The percussion is hard, the phrasing is confident, and the members sound like they are moving toward something instead of waiting for the chorus. Then the hook arrives and repeats “girls will be girls” so many times that the title starts asking for overtime.

I do not hate repetition. Pop music would collapse without it. The problem is what happens around the repetition. The instrumental stays simple, the vocal shape barely changes, and the final chorus does not deliver the larger payoff the arrangement keeps promising. A bridge or one aggressive vocal lift would have helped. Lia could have opened the emotional ceiling. Yeji or Ryujin could have driven a final rhythmic change. Instead, the song keeps circling the slogan.

The dance break changes everything for a moment. The beat gets teeth. The members get room to attack. Suddenly the title track makes complete sense as a performance choice. This is why people who felt lukewarm on the audio reported liking it more after watching the stages. ITZY’s bodies finish sentences the production leaves incomplete.

The message is simple because ITZY have already earned it

The song is about solidarity. Together, they can survive what would flatten any one of them alone. It is familiar territory for the group, whose catalog has spent years bouncing between individual confidence and collective strength. Here, the message is less “I am different” and more “we know exactly who is coming back for us.”

That matters because Lia had returned to full group promotions after her health hiatus. The five-member formation is not just visual symmetry. Fans had spent a long time waiting to see it restored. The song does not spell out that history, but the performance carries it.

The official music video

The story: Mad Max by way of found family

The members are separated inside a ruined, hostile landscape. Each one is navigating danger, damage, or isolation. The visual language is dusty and mechanical, with wreckage, dark roads, fortified interiors, and the feeling that something larger has already gone wrong before the first frame.

The plot is not delivered with a clipboard. Good. We understand the important part through movement. They search, protect, pull, carry, and regroup. The video keeps returning to the idea that strength is relational. Being capable does not mean doing everything alone.

JYP’s own framing called the concept “Mad Max-like,” and that comparison is visible in the rough vehicles, survival styling, and scorched atmosphere. ITZY does not cosplay helplessness between action shots. The members look active inside the world. Even the beauty shots feel alert.

The crow, the rebirth imagery, and the ending

The crow can be read as warning, guide, witness, or all three depending on how much caffeine you have and whether symbolism has started looking back at you. I am keeping my interpretation practical. It appears around transition points and makes the environment feel watched. The bird connects scenes without requiring a villain to explain the apocalypse in a monologue.

The return to unity functions like a rebirth. The landscape has not become soft. The danger is not magically deleted. What changes is the formation. The members find one another and regain agency as a unit. That lands harder than a generic “girl power” pose because the video shows what support requires: someone has to notice you are missing, go back, and physically help.

The final images refuse neat domestic peace. They survive and continue. I like that. Friendship is not presented as a reward after the battle. It is the equipment that gets them through it.

Choreography: the reason the title track won the argument

The choreography uses isolations, hard poses, quick directional changes, grounded legwork, and group shapes that repeatedly assemble and break apart. The members look strongest when the formation is tight. That is not accidental. The dance repeats the song’s thesis more convincingly than the lyrics do.

Ryujin’s weight and timing give the central phrases authority. Yeji attacks every sharp accent like the beat owes her money. Chaeryeong makes the connecting steps worth watching. Yuna stretches the silhouettes. Lia’s cleaner, softer quality prevents the entire routine from becoming one continuous punch.

The dance practice is essential because the music video and Studio Choom camera work sometimes crop the exact footwork fans wanted to study. In full view, the routine is busy without becoming messy. ITZY remains one of the few groups where a dance practice can change the public’s opinion of the song itself.

What worked

• The five-member emotional context. The unity theme means more after a period when the group could not promote as five.
• The video has an actual visual world. Wreckage, vehicles, costuming, and danger belong to the same story.
• The dance break. It briefly becomes the song I wanted for the entire runtime.
• The choreography’s group architecture. The formations make the message physical.
• The members look committed. Nobody is waiting for editing to manufacture intensity.

What did not

The chorus is too repetitive for an instrumental this restrained. The title phrase needs a countermelody, a vocal escalation, or a final variation. The song is short enough that this limitation becomes the main memory unless the viewer is also watching the choreography.

The video’s story could support a longer cut. There are enough ideas here for clearer individual arcs, more clues about the world, and a stronger explanation of how the members reconnect. I do not need a twenty-minute lore lecture. I would happily accept one extra scene per member and another minute of action.