I’ll admit it. I was wrong, but I am so glad that I was wrong. In my predictions for 2024, I predicted that alongside IU’s comeback album, she will announce an Asian tour. Surprisingly, alongside tour dates in Asia, IU confirmed six tour dates in America for her H.E.R. World Tour. From July 15 to Aug 2, IU is set to perform in New Jersey, Georgia, Washington D.C., Illinois, and California. It is an understatement to say that American fans are excited; this is IU’s first world tour and second visit to the United States.
Given IU’s popularity among K-pop fans, I am surprised to see how long it took her to announce a world tour, but I am not complaining. Perhaps my bucket list to see IU won’t have to involve me buying a plane ticket to South Korea but a plane ticket to Los Angeles.
IU’s comeback as a singer has started with a pre-release single, Love Wins All, featuring V of BTS. The ballad came out on Jan. 24 and became an immediate chart-topper, becoming the first song released in 2024 to achieve an All Kill certification, a significant milestone for music streams in South Korea. A song with this achievement has topped various streaming services in South Korea.
The music video was as great as the song, but there was a lot of symbolism and lore in the video that I am still trying to unpack, but this is what I got from the video.
The video features IU and V as the main characters, a couple running away from something sinister, which appears to be a giant floating cube. Yes, a cube is not typically something to run away from in fear, but you can feel their fear alongside the somber production and acting of IU and V.
The couple are running with bloodied faces and torn clothing, and while on the run, they come across an abandoned building. In the building, a mountain of discarded clothing towers over them, representing their inevitable doom. While exploring the building, V discovers a camcorder that, when looked through, depicts a pre-dystopian, apocalyptic world. Rather than the two of them sitting at a dusty table in an abandoned restaurant with dirty clothes, after looking in the camcorder, the two are eating delicious food in a lively restaurant bustling with people. The camcorder gives them brief moments of joy. This illusion is broken when the two are backed up against the mountain of clothing, and knowing that they only have moments to live, IU covers V’s sight to protect him from witnessing the impending horrors. The end scene confirms their death as the clothes they were wearing flutter down onto the mountain of clothes.
According to the music video director, Um Tae Hwa, the cube symbolizes the discrimination and oppression prevalent in our lives, and the camcorder represents the filter of love and acts as a device to portray looking beyond appearances to see the beautiful things in the world. The two stick together even in this messed-up world, proving that ‘love wins all.’
IU set the stage with this short film and music video, leaving fans (including myself) eagerly awaiting her comeback album, The Winnings, set to release on Feb. 20.
