ITZY's 'Girls Will Be Girls' Review: Ten Mini-Albums Deep and Still Getting Sharper

ITZY's tenth mini-album "Girls Will Be Girls" arrived on June 9, 2025, landing as the JYP Entertainment group's most cohesive and confident project since their debut six years ago.

The album opens with an unambiguous declaration of intent. Lead single "Girls Will Be Girls" frames the group not as aspirants to mainstream approval but as a self-defined unit that has outgrown the need for it — a thematic position that sits in productive contrast with the industry's tendency to position girl groups as perpetually striving. For ITZY, who built their identity around the phrase "you and I together, we're all different," the title alone functions as a thesis statement.

A Comeback Built on Consistency

Releasing a tenth mini-album is an achievement that often gets undervalued in a K-pop landscape that increasingly prizes debut moments and franchise launches. ITZY, who debuted in 2019 with "DALLA DALLA," have maintained a consistent output cadence that is rare for a girl group of their vintage. Many of their contemporaries from the third-to-fourth generation transition have either disbanded, gone on extended hiatus, or pivoted their artistic identities dramatically. ITZY has done none of these things.

"Girls Will Be Girls" builds on the post-"CAKE" sonic territory ITZY began exploring in 2024 — a blend of Y2K-influenced production, funk-adjacent bass lines, and Yeji-led choreography that prioritizes formations over individual centerpiece moments. The result is an album that sounds lived-in, the product of a group that has worked out which variables of their formula genuinely click and has chosen to lean into them rather than experiment for experimentation's sake.

The record sold approximately 122,000 copies on its first day via Hanteo, ultimately clearing 417,000 in its first week. Those numbers place it comfortably within the top tier of ITZY's discography in outright sales terms. Crucially, the album also hit No. 1 on iTunes in multiple countries on release day, indicating that the group's global fanbase (MIDZY) mobilized effectively across international markets.

Track-by-Track: Strengths and Trade-offs

At six tracks, "Girls Will Be Girls" covers significant stylistic ground without losing internal coherence. The opening trio establishes the album's energy: the title track delivers a crisp, anthemic hook suited to music show performance stages; "Rush Hour" introduces a faster tempo and interweaving vocal lines between Lia and Chaeryeong that showcase how the group's vocal distribution has matured; and "Star Map" provides a mid-album ballad-adjacent moment without fully committing to the ballad format, which keeps the pacing from stalling.

The back half takes more risks. "On Fire" runs a distorted guitar line alongside a standard four-on-the-floor drum pattern — a combination that sounds deliberately unresolved, creating tension that the song never fully releases. Whether that's a flaw or a feature depends on listener expectation. For those expecting ITZY's usual clean finish, it can feel incomplete. For those open to the group stepping into more textured production, it reads as growth. "Rewind" closes the album on a minor-key note that is genuinely surprising and may be the record's most interesting moment: Ryujin's spoken-word bridge over descending synths functions almost as an epilogue rather than a climax.

The "Girls Will Be Girls" Title Track: Performance Dimensions

The lead single is a carefully constructed live performance vehicle. The choreography, released in a practice video within 24 hours of the album drop, features the group's signature synchronized footwork accented by isolated, sharp arm movements that photograph well — a detail that matters enormously in an era where fancam clips drive a significant portion of artist visibility on platforms like TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

The music video carries a visual palette of industrial settings offset by bright primary color costuming — a combination that references both ITZY's earlier neon-saturated era and the grittier aesthetic they've moved toward in recent releases. Directed by Naive, the label's in-house video production team, it's technically proficient without being revolutionary. The real work happens in the performance, and on that metric, "Girls Will Be Girls" delivers what ITZY's fans have come to expect: sharp, committed, and technically demanding stage presence.

Reactions and Chart Performance

MIDZY coordinated streaming and chart support across multiple regions in the first 72 hours, and the effort was visible in the album's performance on global music platforms. On Melon, the title track debuted within the top 20 and maintained streaming momentum through the end of the week. The iTunes No. 1 position in multiple markets, including the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, reinforced ITZY's particular strength in Southeast Asia, a market where their brand of confident, high-energy girl group performance has found a consistent audience.

Critical reception among Korean music media was warm without being effusive. Several outlets noted that ITZY had "found their lane" — a backhanded compliment that nonetheless acknowledges the group's ability to produce internally consistent work. The acknowledgment of comfort, in a scene that prizes constant reinvention, is worth more than it sounds.

Future Outlook

With ten mini-albums completed and a stable commercial baseline, ITZY's next logical step is a full-length studio album — a format they have still not fully explored. The songs on "Girls Will Be Girls" suggest that the group and their production team have enough material and enough clarity about ITZY's identity to support a ten-to-twelve track project that could function as a definitive artistic statement.

Whether JYP Entertainment moves in that direction in the second half of 2025 would become clearer in the months following this release. What "Girls Will Be Girls" demonstrates, regardless of what comes next, is that ITZY at six years old is a group that has not contracted into complacency — they have kept working, kept refining, and delivered an album that rewards attention.