I tested this with PVs on both Wordpress and MySQL and did not see any issues.
The error you are receiving is a MySQL permissions issue. It’s not related to Kubernetes.
If it is working without PVs then that show the problem is with the MySQL configuration files stored on the PV.
You need to connect to the MySQL database and make sure the wordpress user has the correct privileges to connect using 127.0.0.1.
Better practice is separation front and db to two different deployments or even use StatefulSet for db.
Then use service for db ( WORDPRESS_DB_HOST=mydbserivce).
Also mysql:5.7 relatively old and may not maintained so well. Use stable mariadb:10