Battle of the B-Sides: 9Muses: Miss Agent

 Someone looked at one of my posts using a Linux operating system in the last week. Wow. My eyebrows are raised and I'm a little bit delighted by that. Hello, Linux user. I don't know if you'll see this, but I'm giving you a thumbs up. Hello, everyone else! Welcome, Champions! I know I'm wildly behind with the plan for September, given that it's almost halfway through and I'm only now getting to those posts, so I'll have to move one of my planned August posts to November and one of my originally planned September songs to December. You will get that first gen song this year. September is going to be reserved for the smaller groups. We had big moments in August, and now we're going to get a little bit of a quieter month with smaller groups. Well, metaphorically because this was a nine-member group. Mostly. Sort of. Hence the name. Kind of what it says on the tin.

9MUSES debuted in 2010 under Star Empire as a nine-member group. Again, hence the name. The line-up has changed quite a bit over the nine years that they were active, and the company itself has a bit of a messy history. But the relevant line-up for this song is Eunji, Lee Sem, Sera, Euaerin, Mina, Hyemi, Hyuna, Gyeongree, and Sungah. Their older sister group was Jewelry, who I've already done a post for, and we also had ZE:A and IMFACT there at the company. 

Miss Agent was the seventh track of their first album, PRIMA DONNA, released in 2013. Our lyricist for the track is Jeong Yeong-un, who has only written this song. But in the composer list, we have Lee Yoojin (Suzy, EXO, Taeyeon, Yoon Mirae, Shinhwa, Zo Zazz, NU'EST (FACE!!!!), SF9, KOYOTE, Im Jaebeom, Super Junior, Shannon, Lyn, Vromance, Woody, f(x), ZE:A, Kassy, SinB, T-ARA, Hyolyn, FTISLAND, 100%, EXID, HELLOVENUS, After School Blue, Cheeze, Pentagon, FAVORITE, Bada, Lee Boram, Jewelry, Youha, Sunghee, IMFACT, and S.E.S) and Kim Taehyun (T-ARA, UKISS, SS501, Son Dam Bi, B.D.U, HELLOVENUS, NU'EST, KARA, LABOUM, Lee Hyori, Favorite, Jewelry, After School, Co-Ed School, Q6IX, Ivy, V.O.S, and Fly To The Sky). The producer is the very impressive Sweetune.

Alright, everyone. So. I can't find that they ever performed this, which is a sadness. So I'm going to be dipping into some color-coded lyrics videos and handing one of them over to y'all.

But that's okay because we get to sit with this stunner of a song.

But first!

I found the description of the song from the album introduction. Ahem. "미스 에이전트는 '아이비-유혹의 소나타' '티아라-너때문에미처' '애프터스쿨-뱅' 등 개성있는 곡 스타일로 정평난 김태현 작곡가와 'ZE:A-Watch Out' '신화-Be My Love' '코요태-Hollywood' '임재범-비가' 등으로 세련된 곡 스타일로 유명세를 타고있는 이유진 작곡가가 나인 뮤지스를 위해 함께 작업한 곡으로 80년대 첩보물 영화를 연상케 테마와 간결한 리듬, 다이나믹한 음악적 진행, 올드 패션한 사운드가 전체곡의 긴장감과 재미를 더해주는 세련된 곡이다." In case you don't read Korean all that well, the English version of that website has this:  ""Miss Agent" is a song created for Nine Muses by composer Kim Tae-hyun, known for his distinctive song styles such as "Ivy - Sonata of Temptation," "T-ara - Crazy Because of You," and "After School - Bang," and composer Lee Yu-jin, who is gaining fame for her sophisticated song styles such as "ZE:A - Watch Out," "Shinhwa - Be My Love," "Koyote - Hollywood," and "Im Jae-beom - Rain." It is a sophisticated song that adds tension and fun to the entire track with a theme reminiscent of 80s spy movies, a concise rhythm, dynamic musical progression, and an old-fashioned sound." For the record, Sonata of Temptation by Ivy is a stunning song that I will be covering eventually, and I actually almost forgot about it because I have the memory of a goldfish sometimes, especially when I can't add songs to the playlist of songs I want to cover or have been recommended.

But an old-fashioned sound indeed. It's surprisingly Bayonetta in places in the instrumental, but also very Charlie's Angels, like if Charlie's Angels decided to become a girl group as their cover. Kind of like HUNTR/X, but just general spy behavior instead of necessarily monster hunting.

But what is it about songs about suspecting your boyfriend is cheating that end up being almost aggressively seductive? It's like instead of lingering in the feeling of grief and anger, they're making a beeline straight for "Fine. I'm getting back to work while I'm hurting," but there's a seductiveness to their pre-chorus specifically (like at :40) when it gets all breathy while asking what the messages were and where he is tonight. The other pre-chorus (1:39) is after the confrontation and it's going "Fine. Pretend you don't know anything." This is a woman who has already made her choice to leave; she just needs that confirmation to justify to herself leaving. 

And it's the bridge at 2:10 where she says "I'm out." And the fact that there isn't a pause in the song between the chorus with the emotional devastation and the lyrically sharp but vocally soft bridge is brilliant. When a relationship is falling apart like that, especially once you get to the point of confrontation, impulses and emotions are running high and you don't have time usually to stop and breathe and think about it. But she's also already done the thinking. That bridge is when she turns the previous two minutes of song from thought and questioning into action. "You've shown me who you are and I believe you. We're over."

I absolutely love the line "I can not love you no more/Baby, you and me is over" at 2:20. And there's something really interesting in that line that I'm going to assume is done on purpose and not because whoever wrote that line is not a native English speaker and Korean doesn't have subject-verb agreement like English does. "Is" is the conjugation of "to be" that refers to a single entity in the third person. Which means that that line, because of that grammar, means that the singular entity that they were as a couple is over. The native way to say that would be "you and I are over" but that makes them plural and therefore still separate. This way, it's literally saying that the version of her that she was while in that relationship, the literal couple as a singular noun, is gone. She has become someone else. 

And before someone comes at me about "It's not that deep," poetry analysis was one of the dominant things I did for two-and-a-half years while I was getting my degree.

And the fun thing is that the song just circles. If you've seen the music video for 2 Different Tears by Wonder Girls, that's kind of the vibe that this song would have had if this had gotten a music video. It's the slightly predatory circling where you're trying to decide what to do about the target, not that you've got the target in your crosshairs and are enacting The Plan. Also, I can hear the eyeliner. I would love to say that I can elaborate on that, but that is black, winged eyeliner that this song sounds like and I cannot elaborate.

And that's a wrap, Champions! We're officially starting off the September posts with a group that had basically everything going for them but just never managed to take, which is a shame. Still, I'm glad that they gave us the music they did because this is such a fun song with quite the little attitude and a lot of the vibrato I can ask for. I also recommend a listen to JUST A GIRL and RUMOR from the same album. They're fun songs. And the title track is a little bit country, so that might be covered at some point in the future because I love me a country song.

If you've got a song you'd like me to cover, feel free to drop it in the comments or you can give it to me via The Form if you'd prefer a little more structured anonymity.

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