IU Pays Tribute to Complex Female Relationships in “Shh.. (Feat. HYEIN, WONSUN JOE, & Special Narr. Patti Kim)” — In Depth Analysis/Review
Your mother who gossips about your adversities to strangers, the best friend you never talked to again after that day the attitude in her voice changed, & your favorite singer whose wins and losses you carry in your heart as your own — they all go by the name ‘Shh’.
What makes IU such a special artist who has garnered everlasting captivation for over a decade is heavily attributed to her precious storytelling. Starting off as a teenager beloved for her innocent and whimsical nature to growing into a primed artist that has frolicked through many sounds, her artfully tender lyrics have grounded her craftsmanship and appeal over all these years. If you’ve ever experienced an IU album, it is clear how thorough she is in creating a fully realized story. Each album has a distinct theme and moving emotional lessons that unravel like chapters of a story book.
While the majority of the songs from her latest comeback — her 6th mini album The Winning — highlight the joyous freedom that comes with age, part of that wisdom is also being granted the perspective of being able to recognize convoluted patterns and accepting the uglier aspects of it you can’t change. That complexity is what makes the track titled “Shh.. (Feat. HYEIN, WONSUN JOE, & Special Narr. Patti Kim)” the most stirring and profound track out of them all — and I’d go as far to say one of the best in her discography.
Here, IU recalls formative female relations in her life that despite being so near and dear to her heart, were equally lovesome and tortuous — and remain enigmatic hidden in plain sight. For a woman in her thirties like IU, there’s no escaping the consensus that no amount of time that will make the wounds that shaped your sense of womanhood heal itself. Who were the first ones that trained your trigger to fire?
From the sonic production, lyrical narrative, even the choice of featured artists, and exquisitely cinematic music video, somehow IU was able to build layer upon layer of nuances to create a heartrending echo of female emotion.
First Impression
Let’s start with the whirlwind of the complete title — it doesn’t get much more mysterious than the interjection ‘shh..’ paired with a surprising list of diverse Korean female singers: a new generation K-Pop girl group member (NewJeans HYEIN), former lead of a 2000s Korean rock band turned soloist (Joe Wonsun), plus a narration from a retired legend popular in the 60s/70s (Patti Kim). Each singer in successive order rather than even distribution or small featurings as a format threw me off at first, but with the various ages you can hear in their voices, it naturally felt like a progression through IU’s life of how her feelings have changed over time.
Based on what I could pick up from my first listen (not looking at the English translation) and going in blind to the meaning, I figured that this song covers the topic of some defining relationship that cannot be explained or felt as one entirety. The establishing first line that the song orbits around — “It’s not about F, not about L, we got something else” followed by the later English line of the chorus — “(How special we are)” signals a sticky connection. While the aforementioned lyrics are vague without added context, I found myself inferring the ‘F’ as friendship and ‘L’ as (romantic) love.
Sonic Analysis
Without the knowledge of the lyrics, the sound by itself is quite provocative with the blues genre inspired composition from the dirty bass guitar, striking line of electric guitar twinges, and especially the piquant cadence of the main vocal topline paired with the darkling hush of the ‘shh’ at the end of each chorus; imagine a dark jazz club with yourself a few drinks in, soaking up the live band with your eyes closed.
It starts off with a curious melody of reverberating skittered piano keys before the wonderful punchiness of the drums, bass, and IU’s tantalizing voice. We lean further into the natural mysterious energy to the first brief verse from IU — twinkled piano keys and minimal pizzicato strings creep along, in a way that makes you furrow your eyebrows and tilt your head while pondering. A synth pad deepens the ambiance and guitar licks help it ever so slowly bubble up in tension. Her section ends at a place where the momentum is about to resolve with the next downbeat, but the instrumental switches out the thick atmosphere for HYEIN’s designated section with the bare simplicity of a main muted picked guitar, spare bass guitar notes, authentic kick drum and hi-hat, and lingering fragments of the sharp electric guitar. The electric organ that sneaks smoothly in the scene and guitar flanging all get louder and grittier as the section moves forward, building pressure up to the big and busy chorus.
The following verse after HYEIN’s chorus goes straight into Joe Wonsun’s turn with the production’s own adjustment of focus on the winding guitar and subdued hits of a kick and quiet hi-hat hits, later building up the percussion. IU comes back in after all this time to finish up the end of this verse with the piano and the familiar works. That strong transition of IU’s smooth vocals punching out a launching staccato melody into a soaring note bleeding over the chorus by Joe Wonsun is such a satisfying release. What ends up being the final chorus finishes and suddenly drops us into a new dimension of a historic Korean mystery drama — we get a somber cinematic narration by Patti Kim in a ghostly room, with a gorgeously embellished picking of an acoustic guitar line laying it all to rest.
While the impact of the featured artists on this song goes beyond surface level, sonically speaking, the way they’re incorporated into the composition creates such an interesting dynamic. While the song remains solidly in the bluesy genre, the instrumental contorting to create a particular mood for each individual is such a clever way for them to have a signature stamp among the eclectic range of singers. Despite everyone’s voices having a distinct color — IU with her clear tone, HYEIN with breathy warmth, Joe Wonsun’s high toned rasp, and even Patti Kim’s husky narration — the verses and choruses carry the same melody for no matter who is singing. The short echoing call and response with IU’s background vocals for whoever is taking that chorus for all the choruses is gratifying on its own, but also aids in unifying all these voices. Those elements of cohesiveness affirm my assumption in making the song feel like different colored lenses of the same person. IU introduces the situation herself in the opening chorus and short verse, but we start with HYEIN to stand in as her adolescent self, then a version of her in a couple decades from Joe Wonsun, then in the far future of her looking back at her life with the narration from Patti Kim.
While everyone on this track does an excellent job, I want to single out HYEIN’s section, which very pleasantly shocked me the most. With IU and HYEIN’s voices right after the other, on first listen I honestly did a double take to realize that it was her vocals and not IU switching up her tone. The young idol’s feature on this song deserves such high praise with how masterfully every inflection comes across with various peaks of emotion — not to mention how much it highlights the sheer beauty of her natural vocal color in this r&b-inspired vocal style.
Lyrical Analysis
The opening chorus (that later gets altered) from IU draws up an image of walking side by side with a specific ‘her’:
“Her long footsteps (Connecting each other)… Forever a step ahead of me”
I see it as both a real scene of a small young daughter trying to keep pace while walking with her mom on a sidewalk, but also metaphorically the daughter cannot catch up to the idea of her mother. The whole of IU’s first verse really is the perfect passage to describe the damning, complicated pull-and-tug relationship between a mother and daughter. Especially the line: “Hmm, perhaps it’s my first love / And my first world” really speaks to the codependency that shapes the rest of your life.
HYEIN’s verse reiterates the inherent confusion as to how you could harbor this hostility, but still catch yourself enamored by her:
“Even in an unpleasant dream / Why am I smiling while looking at you?”
The detail: “Your thick dark hair (F), braided into pigtails (L)” in the first modified chorus makes me think it’s the narrator describing herself from her mother’s point of view. By attempting to step outside of herself and into the mind of her mother, maybe she can be more understanding of how both of them played a role in the complications of their relationship.
The next verse of Joe Won Sun with the more seasoned voice speaking in pure idolization of this woman makes me think that IU is predicting that her future self will start to see her mom in a brighter light while more removed from the naivety of being a child; the positive qualities will overbear the messy shadows, eventually. The chorus lyrics: “I’m going to face it (F), this old emotion (L)” backs this idea up, of imagining a time where you’ll be brave enough to swallow your grievances — perhaps the present version of her feels close to reaching that point?
The brief insert of IU back for the pre-chorus after letting the other voices take the reins — “Forever etched somewhere in my time / To those girls who remain an enigma” is her leaning into acceptance of what it is instead of trying to reach a solution. I also think those particular lines are the synopsis of the entire track. The intensity and interwoven fate of the relationship is accepted by the wiser daughter, no matter how much she tries to fight it:
“Until she turns to ash (F), she’ll live within me (L) / With a breath burning red”
It’s important to note that IU’s vocals always as the ‘response’ part of the ‘call’ melody helps remind us that present IU is still connected with these past and future versions of her through the evolutions. The ending dramatized narration is a noticeable shift that infers a large passing of time — in my eyes, either a final absolute look back towards the end of life where she is about to retell the story of the song or cutting to an entirely new woman — like her grandmother — to confess that she’s been through this cycle as well.
“I have an old tale / Known by everyone / And no one at the same time”
The narration really resonates as a way to pin down this feeling all women feel with their relationships with other women — an infinite experience loop every female will deal with for the rest of time than cannot be solved, that unpinnable pit in your stomach that every woman feels silently in themselves or can see the consequences of it in your being. The all-connecting phrase “Her name is shh” at the end of each chorus and as the final line is such an excellent way to present these deep harbored feelings as so painful and complicated that it cannot be said aloud or put into proper words, and our constant need to push it down to go about life smoother, safer left unaddressed.
While a track so adaptable in intimate meaning for every listener, it’s also important to hold regard for IU’s original intention for the track: a multifaceted collection of various female to female relationships — familial, platonic, and idolization.
Directly from the mouth of IU herself, an excerpt from Marie Claire Korea (March 2024) interview explaining the track:
“’Shh..’ contains the voices of female vocalists from each generation. The lyrics are about important women in our lives. For example, I’m singing about my mum, HYEIN is singing about her first friend. Through the relationship with a friend, she experiences emotions like social relationships, friendship and rivalry for the first time. WONSUN JOE, who is in her 50s, sings about the complicated emotions towards one’s role model. A role model is someone you respect, yet also an obstacle to overcome and can also come as a fresh shock to you. It’s a song about women sharing their complicated emotions that can’t be summarized simply as either love, friendship, obsession or something else.”
While I retain that the role of a mother inherently includes friendship and a role-model, this perspective from IU is also compelling. HYEIN as the youngest of the ensemble is ideal to encapsulate the juvenile essence of an adolescent female friendship. Meanwhile, having Joe Wonsun sing about a role model is particularly fascinating as IU mentioned in a recent interview that she listened and looked up to her as a singer — creating a satisfying full circle moment.
Music Video Analysis
The music video is deeply intriguing and masterful by itself. The concept of the video entirely focuses on a mother and daughter relationship, with IU playing the mother and actress Tang Wei as her daughter. For a song that expresses the uneasy ambiguity of female relationships, the music video embraces that nature by creating a loose storyline that heavily relies on the acting prowess of the main two to convey the range of complex emotions principally through a series of glares.
However, something that is easy to look over the first watch are the quick flashes of dialogue that appear to move the story along with some context for certain scenes. Quoted text in English and Korean on top of a plain background cut in unexpectedly during tense moments like in a silent movie — supplementing it, rather than spelling things out and completely removing mystique.
It simply takes place alternating between two main locations — a vintage car parked on a snowy city street and a dim but rather homely apartment. The settings — and clearer as the video furthers, the lighting — match the hot and coldness of the relationship between the two women. The use of the vivid colorful lights cascading over their faces or the frame, primarily the bold red and icy blue are excellent visual aids for storytelling but also enhance the cinematic quality with its stunningness.
It’s also important to note that one of the first establishing shots of the video is a view from inside a clothing store, looking outside through the window to see a white car parked on the opposite side of the street. While it seems like an insignificant shot, something that might be hard to first catch is the canopy entrance titled ‘MOBIUS STRIP’ that the car is parked right in front of — hinting at what we come to understand later when almost exactly the same shot returns at the end.
The story starts with a woman brooding in the car, then looks out to see another particular woman on the street. The woman in the car follows the other as she walks along the street, before she steps out of the mist to get in the car to sit in the passenger seat. They both look at each other with tense eyes, while a light momentarily washes over their faces right before it cuts to the apartment. Up until this point, we don’t have any indication on who these two women are, how they know each other, and what their relationship is. All we know so far from their mannerisms is that they are somewhat familiar with each other, but with a clear emotional distance.
Once we’re at the apartment, we get clues of the two main characters portraying a mother and daughter through a short shot of a picture frame on the dresser with IU and a young girl sitting on a couch — the older looking in the distance off to the side and the younger gazing up at her face.
Later on, there’s also a concise lovely flashback scene of the same two in the picture lying next to each other on a base of chiffon and flowers. There’s a warm presence when together, but changes to more forlorn when the little one disappears from the scene and the older is left laying under a shadowy light.
When the daughter brings her mother into her home, initially we see the clear power dynamic with the arrogant demeanor of the mother and the anxious daughter. The vital turning point that happens next is my favorite part of the music video.
The tension slowly shifts in power as they stare at the elephant in the room — the center floorboard compartment with a bold red cloth peaking out. The mother dares to inch her way to it cautiously, and once she opens it, she looks up with an unnerved, humbled look on her face, and the daughter looks back with glossy, wide-eyed conviction.
“WONDERED WHY I WAS STARING?” “SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THERE.” “I HID HER HERE.” “OUT OF DEAR LOVE.”
A peach-toned light beaming from the inside washes their faces from under, and the energy immediately takes a turn as the mother transmutes her hurt into caring empathy towards the daughter as she softly brushes the hair falling next to her face, with the daughter’s wide eyes reading as surprised now.
I love how it’s vague on the surface by not showing the audience what exactly they’re viewing inside; this ‘show, not tell’ approach only allowing us to see their visceral reactions makes it that much stronger. This metaphorical visual ties beautifully into how the narrator of the song is unable to fully comprehend the nature of her relationships. Just like how we can’t see or grasp the intensity, it’s not so imperative as we can feel it all the same.
I also love how the locational changes clearly reflect the emotional progression of their reunion. The car is the daughter’s sense of safety out in the world, and when we first see the mother, she is an estranged straggler on the frosty street. We see when she steps into the passenger seat of her daughter’s car, she’s nonchalant about it, but her daughter’s eyes are not welcoming of her trying to get close. Nevertheless, the daughter emotionally lets her in — physically, the apartment. Even in the warmth of her own home, she still has the inflamed and vicious pain from and towards her mother buried in a place where it can remain untouched, as it’s too heinous to deal with.
With the hatch still open, it cuts to flashes of a close-up of the trunk of a car, resembling the one they were just in. The mother leans in to whisper in the daughter’s ear to relay her own secret.
“SHE SHOULDN’T BE HERE, TOO.” “TRUTH IS, I SAW HER FIRST.” “I HID HER AWAY, TOO.”
The mother lets her daughter see her own experience, with the visual playing out as stepping into the car with her daughter once again. This time the mother sits in the driver’s seat, inferring the role of the one with more power in their dynamic here. We see the daughter first with a fiery bright shade of light cast on her, staring at full attention, faced toward the mother. It then quickly shifts once the light changes to a cool bright blue, where she begins to glare at her mother with a teasing, lightly menacing nature.
The daughter suddenly disappears sitting next to her in the car as the lights die down and we’re brought into a red hot light, back into the apartment, with both of their eyes glued on each other — the mother with a kind of innocence as she dissolves her guilt and the daughter with anger turning into disbelief. As there was a short shot earlier of the mother walking in the street, leading her daughter seemingly towards the familiar car, it’s now revealed that the daughter (specifically, the version who provoked the mother in that scene) is passed out in the trunk of her mother’s car.
I really like how we switch the perspective to the mother’s view of the relationship by keeping the same settings, to say it’s the direct flip side of the same coin. Just like how the car was the daughter’s safe self, we now see it belong to the mother in the driver seat, with the daughter eliciting strong feelings out of her. We see the intensity of it from the bold colored lights, then by the time the mother looks over to the empty side where her daughter once was, it only makes sense when she shows us the daughter passed out in the trunk — just like she saw her daughter do to her, buried in a place where it can remain untouched, too bothersome to deal with.
The particular use of the compartment beneath the floorboards to represent their buried emotions immediately strikes me as a reference to “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. A key point of the iconic short story is the narrator burying a murdered body underneath the floorboards. In both pieces of work, what’s under the floorboards represents a dark sensation that is desperately hidden — albeit, in “Tell-Tale Heart” that emotion is paranoia, compared to female affliction in “Shh..”. It’s also interesting to note the diversions in contrast — both the daughter and mother of “Shh..” take turns paralleling the role of the ‘murderer’ and rather than paranoid or even concerned when the truth comes out, they both are rather relieved about it compared to distressed yielding.
It ends with the built in closing narration from the song as the red light spills in the room through the window; with tears in their eyes, they gently embrace each other. It then pans to all of the vintage framed pictures that were present on the dresser that depict various relations of women — elderly ladies, a nuclear family, and young girls on school grounds to name some that are shown. It gently reminds us that this story encompasses all female relationships.
It cuts back to the recognizable setting of the car parked on that cold street — in front of the “MOBIUS STRIP” labeled entrance — except there’s a new set of a mother and daughter. The ending wraps up in a way that shows us that even though our main characters have reached a form of acceptance, the timeless loop of the mother and daughter arduous entanglement will never close.
Connecting it all together — the lyrics, music video, and explanation from the artist herself — it feels like all these types of relationships are put together into a representative female figure. The exclusive cycle (in which the rest of the world — well, men, remain oblivious to) mostly perpetuated by both internal and plain old misogyny makes it so that women cannot have untainted relationships with each other — we stain each other red, with laughter in the air and hot blood boiling in our veins, simultaneously, and helplessly. We cannot be happy for each other without jealousy, because something tells us there cannot be peace that way, and we cannot escape or turn away from it in any female/female relationship.
This song is a masterpiece that has left me completely stunned. The entire experience from the audio journey of the first listen through each verse and performer, to the exceptional high cinematic music video, to reading through the English translated lyrics and trying to interpret it myself, then dissecting what IU herself has stated about this song — every new layer I uncover continues to blow my mind with the entire elaborate concept and how meticulous every detail was executed. I adore any song that tackles the complications that come from non-romantic love, and this song focused on the complex yet recurring thread and cycles of female centric relationships is so objectively fascinating but also unexpectedly therapeutic. Every aspect of this song continues to blow my mind by the mere thought of it, and somehow I’m still impressed by IU’s boundless level of artistry.
