IU started the promotion schedule for her new song titled "Love Wins" a few days ago when she revealed the poster of the song in collaboration with V. Since announcing the news and poster of the new song, fans I have been eagerly waiting for the song to be released.
However, recently, a controversy surrounding the song's title began to emerge. There was even huge criticism for IU to the point that she and her agency were forced to make the decision to change its name.
Faced with IU's move, many fans expressed that the criticism directed at her was excessive:
On the 16th of this month, IU revealed her new single titled “Love Wins”, a collaboration with V. IU and V sat next to each other at a table and featured the line “With this poor imagination of mine, to somewhere unimaginable”. The music video was directed by Eom Tae-hwa, director of Concrete Utopia, making fans extremely excited about this collaboration.
However, 4 days after the song was released, a controversy began to arise on social networks, regarding the song's title. Some people have raised issues with the title of IU and V's pre-release song, arguing that it is a phrase αѕѕociated and popular with the LGBTQIA+ community. A portion of the public criticized the title of IU’s pre-release single, claiming it was “queerbaiting.” According to Wikipedia, “Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but do not depict, same-ѕєχ romance or other LGBTQ+ representation."
While "Love Wins" emerged as a powerful slogan for LGBT rights, encapsulating the essence of equality, acceptance, and the ongoing fιgнт for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. Originating from the marriage equality movement, the phrase gained prominence after the historic US Supreme Court decision in 2015, legalizing same-ѕєχ marriage across the United States. Beyond marriage equality, "Love Wins" symbolizes the broader pursuit of inclusivity, understanding, and the belief that love transcends gender, fostering a message of unity and respect for diverse identities within the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
Netizens have left a lot of criticism and even asked IU to cancel this song because they claimed that using this phrase, which has been a slogan in pride parades for ѕєχual minorities, for general heteroѕєχual content may dilute its original meaning. They wrote on SNS like "IU wants to pretend that “Love Wins” is about how cuteness and being friendly will save the world, using a light-hearted disguise. But as you can observe from her past marketing strategies, just as how she always is, her intentions are too transparent. It’s a pity and it’s disappointing."
On the other hand, fans of IU and V pointed out that the song's title is not as "bad" as many people are trying to make it mean. Many people defended the singer, saying that "Love wins" was the slogan she used throughout her career. IU is also not the first artist to use this phrase for the title of their song. Country singer Carrie Underwood released the нιт song “Love Wins” in 2018.
When releasing this song, IU also explained the meaning of the song: "Someone calls this an era of great loathing. Certainly, it doesn't seem like a time rampant with love...Love definitely has a fιgнтing chance. This story is about those who strive to love to the very end in a world that hinders loving. As an aside, among the five songs in this album, there are two dedicated to the people I love, especially my fans, and one of them is this song, "Love wins."
But after 4 days of revealing the song, IU and the company decided to change the song's name to "Love Wins All" to avoid unnecessary criticism. IU's agency, EDAM Entertainment released a statement on social media saying: "We would like to inform you that the title of IU's pre-release song <Love wins>, to be released on January 24th at 6PM, is changed to <Love wins all> as of today. We decided to change the title to respect and support everyone who loves in their various ways, and we accept the opinions of those who express concerns that precious messages might be blurred due to the title. If there is one single thing that is exactly opposite to the message would be the word 'hatred,' which was mentioned in detail in the track intro which was released on January 18th".
Since then, new versions of promotional images, including posters, have been released with the new title. IU's pre-release single “Love wins all” is still scheduled for release on January 24 at 6 p.m. KST.
