Irene and the uncertain future of Red Velvet

On Ocotber 20th, fashion editor Kang Kook-Hwa wrote on her Instagram about an unpleasant experience with a celebrity she had to endure, claiming she had been verbally insulted and that said celebrity had a past history of such outbursts against staff members, closing her statement with the hashtags "#psycho" and "#monster". That quickly drew people's attention to both being names of Red Velvet songs, prompting them to start rumours about the person being one of their members, mostly Irene or Seulgi, who had participated on the group's subunit that released "Monster". Later, Irene admitted and wrote an apology on her Instagram about the incident. However, it was too late.

Red Velvet at Redmare press conference. August 5th, 2018. L to R: Joy, Yeri, Irene, Seulgi, Wendy.

Abuse of power is an issue that is not taken lightly, especially coming from a celebrity, therefore, what followed has been major backlash. Even members who had been completely apart from the controversy, such as Joy, received attacks on social media. From one of the most loved groups in Korea, Red Velvet turned into potentially the most hated in a snap, which raises the question about the future of the quintet. Can they recover from this or is it truly a career ending scandal?

Red Velvet has yet to have a comeback in 2020, only releasing the already mentioned "Monster" from the subunit featuring Irene and Seulgi. Considering the group's extremely busy schedule up until 2019, that's a major change from previous years, to which both the group starting to age (it turned 6 years old in August) but also the accident suffered by member Wendy, which left her in the hospital for two months. Even though Wendy has been discharged and appears on the group's only release of the year, the cover in tribute of legendary singer and fellow SM Entertainment labelmate BoA's "Milky Way" as part of the celebrations for her 20th anniversary of debut, the singer has yet to appear in public with the group and has not participated at any performances in 2020.

A few months ago, Irene lost some of her endorsements, which raised questions considering her enormous popularity. First it was Lemona, who had Irene as their endorser since 2018, but opted for boyband BTS, later soju brand Chamisul, which decided to return to its old endorser IU despite good results following Irene's endorsement. Makes you ask if her attitude issues indeed played a role on her getting dropped by those brands, plus her lack of endorsements and activities during this year in general, with many people in the industry being aware of her attitude issues that have now surfaced.

Truth is that Red Velvet has never faced so much uncertainty about the future of the group. Like it or not, Irene has been the most popular member for a long time, and the one who has drawn the most attention to the group, which obviously amplified the scandal even more. The group is already dealing with the consequences of the scandal, as its scheduled appearance on "K-Culture Festival" last October 24th got canceled. When your most popular member is in very bad terms with the public, it's very difficult to isolate the group from the effects of such bad relationship. Case in point the hate comments thrown against members Joy and Yeri. Members Seulgi and Wendy have largely been exempted from the narrative but they are still part of a group under a very complicated situation. The possibility of SM placing them on a hiatus is very likely, including the very likely cancellation of a comeback that had been rumoured to happen at the end of the year.

Also there are more things working against the group. Next year the contracts of the members expire. Considering Wendy's injury and Irene's issues, no one knows which decisions SM Entertainment or the members will make regarding their futures individually and as a group. Especially with the rumours of a new girl group on the way. It's not like SM has handled issues like this correctly in the past, instead opting to distract the public from the problems by throwing new idols straight into the fire. Six years later, it seems like they have come full circle.

Edit: turns out SM is indeed debuting a new girl group.

Twice and the flaws of a "group or bust" agenda

Yesterday, October 20th, Twice turned five years old. The nine piece group, which debuted to little fanfare in the fall of 2015, ended up becoming one of the main girlgroups of the 3rd generation of k-pop, many consider the group to be the outright leader of the generation in the female side, to the point it earned the label of "Nation's Girlgroup", previously only associated with juggernaut senior group Girls' Generation, essentially crowing Twice as their successor. The group had the numbers to back that up: from 2016 to 2018 it had a run of nine straight singles reaching #1 at the Gaon Digital Chart, which tied a record established by Sistar. The group also ended up surpassing Girls' Generation girlgroup record of 10 Daesangs (the most prestigious prize at Korean award shows), winning its 15th award in november of last year. The group also managed to become the best-selling Korean girlgroup of all time, eclipsing the 5 million sales mark in Korea with its latest EP "More & More". That's defintiely an impressive resume and offers good arguments to indeed place the group at the top girlgroup of its generation.

However, the scenario Twice faces for its next comeback, scheduled for next Monday, October 26th, is a much different one from its days of seemingly untouchable dominance from 2016 to 2018. Since then, new players have arisen on the k-pop girlgroup arena. 2018 saw the debut of IZ*ONE, a Korean-Japanese group formed at competition show "Produce 48". With popular members from the 48G Franchise, which includes most of the top girlgroups in Japan such as AKB48 and SKE48, IZ*ONE found instant success in the Japanese market, which had become just as important to Twice as Korea, positioning itself as its main rival in the archipelago. Twice, which relied on its big Japanese fanbase to pull numbers beyond reach for other girlgroups, suddenly had IZ*ONE on its heels and even breaking some of its sales records in Korea using the same formula and base of supporters.

Since tying the record for 9 straight #1 singles, Twice has seen a decline on its digital strength. The streak came to an end in April 2019 when "Fancy" peaked at #3. However, the song had good longevity in the charts, on pair with the group's previous hits, but for the subsequent comebacks "Feel Special" and "More & More". Furthermore, older players in the industry have stepped up and in some cases even surpassed the "Nation's Girlgroup". Red Velvet, albeit not selling as much, managed to score a big digital hit over the same time. Blackpink also scored a top hit in Korea and its most recent album, powered by the worldwide expansion of the group and robust sales in both China and the United States, saw them took the record of best-selling album by a Korean girlgroup away from Twice. 2020 also saw the sudden rise of Oh My Girl, a group that actually debuted on the same year as Twice but had never enjoyed such explosive levels of success until this year, but are now making a strong case to be considered Korea's new darlings, landing new gigs left and right day after day. Twice has never been as vulnerable as right now, which makes its upcoming comeback potentially the most important of their careers since their rookie days. So, where does Twice go from here?

Twice group teaser for its second full-length album, "Eyes Wide Open", scheduled to be released on October 26th. L to R: Tzuyu, Chaeyoung, Jeongyeon, Dahyun, Nayeon, Mina, Jihyo, Sana and Momo.

In the past paragraph, when talking about Oh My Girl's recent blow up to top group status, I put emphasis on how the group has landed gigs left and right, riding on its massive success. Twice, on the other hand, has sat largely quiet both as a group and individually in 2020, especially the latter, save for the occasional magazine cover. Given the Twice's current age, with its rookie days way behind in the mirror, it is expected that group activities start to slow down. In 2017, Twice had four Korean comebacks and followed that with six promotion cycles combining both Korea and Japan in 2018. In 2020 that went down to only four releases between the two countries, which is still a lot for a five-year-old group but evidently less compared to past years. Given the traditional pattern of girlgroups to branching out to solo activities during the point of their careers Twice finds itself in, you could expect such decline to be matched by an increase of individual activities. That hasn't been the case and here's why.

JYP Entertainment, Twice's label, has always pushed an agenda that I call "group or bust". Basically this agenda consists on restraining group members individual activities as much as possible and making them rely on the group to essentially everything they need. All the focus is geared towards the group as an entity with the members being afforded little to no individuality. In case a member's popularity experiences a rise, no push of such member follows, they just continue to ride along what's given to them within the group's structure. For the first 3 years or so this isn't much of a problem, because the main goal is indeed to establish the group in the idol scene, that's true for everybody. But once the group is established and old enough, which is the case for Twice, this agenda becomes a liability and could present big problems for the members to establish themselves, especially for girlgroups, whose shelf life is quite short. Even so, it's been five years and there have been little signs towards this agenda being dropped by JYP. Many fans endorse it after all, even accuse those who push for more solo activities for their favorite members as being disruptors who want to destroy the group's bond. 

For JYP Entertainment, there is also a historical precedent that makes it even more hellbent on a "group or bust" approach. Before Twice, the last girlgroup JYP had debuted, Miss A, had followed the approach of giving solo activities to its members from the get go. The group had instant success, with its debut single, "Bad Girl Good Girl" becoming the best-selling song of 2010 in Korea. Member Bae Suzy quickly emerged as a public favorite, which led the company to cast her on dramas such as "Dream High (2011)" and movies such as "Architecture 101 (2012)". Suzy eventually grew so big her populairty dwarfed the group's, to a point it became increasingly difficult for Miss A to prepare for new releases due to multiple conflicts of schedule, reaching its maximum point in 2014, where the group would go the whole year without having a comeback.

Miss A performance on MCountdown, April 2nd, 2015. This was the group's first comeback since november 2013 and ended up being its last. JYP Entertainment would debut Twice later on the same year, whilst Miss A would go on hiatus until disbanding in 2017. L to R: Jia, Min, Suzy and Fei.

While the Suzy experience may have led JYP to take a hard turn on the opposite direction towards its next girlgroup, this time has passed. It is very unlikely at this point that any Twice member will experience a monumental surge in popularity. They already have extremely high name recognition. At most there will be some typical popularity fluctuations that happen over the course of a group's career. And despite Twice's lack of solo activities, the group's members have enjoyed decent individual popularity. Polling company Gallup has surveyed the most popular idols in Korea for a long time. Twice as group ranked 2nd for 3 straight years (2016-18) with the best result being in 2018 with 11% picking it as their favorite group, before falling to 6th in 2019. Individually the group has also landed at least 3 members among the 20 most popular idols in the country every year since 2016, with as many as 5 members ranking in 2018. Out of the group's 9 members, only Jihyo and Chaeyoung have never ranked inside the top 20. Nayeon and Jeongyeon have ranked on every year since 2016, with the first one reaching 8.2% preference in 2019, good enough to place her as the 5th most popular idol in the country on that year. Now is time for such popularity to mean more to them than just being members of Twice. Like it or not, every idol group is temporary and that's especially true for girlgroups. Twice has already got by over 70% of their careers implying that, just like the large of majority of girlgroups, they fall victim of the dreaded "7-year curse". While I believe Twice is popular enough to go beyond 7 years, it's also clear that if they do the activities will drastically slow down, with even the possibility of the group essentially existing in name only, with the odds of a comeback being very small by the time.

"Eyes Wide Open" should be the last hurrah of the old Twice. The last time many of its members introduce themselves as "from Twice" following their names or "Twice's" preceding them. That the full names of Im Nayeon, Yoo Jeongyeon, Hirai Momo, Minatozaki Sana, Park Jihyo, Miyoui Mina, Son Chaeyoung, Kim Dahyun and Chou Tzuyu will start being their calling cards, not the name of the group. Do I believe this will happen after this comeback? Until proven otherwise, no.

Oh My Girl and the Western Success Illusion

 The month is December 2018. Oh My Girl are finishing off a good year in Korea, especially following a tumultuous 2017 that saw them losing member JinE due to struggles with anorexia. 2018 gave them their first music show win with "Secret Garden", which turned to be their most popular song at the time, spending 12 weeks in the top 100 of the Gaon Digital Chart. Their follow-up single, the upbeat "Remember Me" didn't perform as well, but the group managed to consolidate itself in the second tier of girlgroups in Korea, just on the outside looking in of the top groups such as Twice, Blackpink Red Velvet and Mamamoo. Therefore, 2019 sounded like a promising year to build momentum and potentially elevate Oh My Girl to top group status in Korea. So what was the next move WM Entertainment, the company managing it, was going to make to reach such status?

Of course, it was deciding for a tour in the United States with pricey tickets. Predictably, the tour failed to gather much of an audience, gaining instead infamy for its concerts with empty seats. Just like many groups before and after, Oh My Girl, more specifically, its record label, fell into the Western success trap, particularly the north american one, in search for a nonexistent audience in western countries, ignoring the fact that k-pop is merely a niche in those places.

Oh My Girl performance in Atlanta, United States. January 18th, 2019.

Many groups have made the same mistake as Oh My Girl and are still failing to realize there is very small interest towards them. 2019 in particular was a year where many k-pop groups flooded the United States market with tours, effectively cannibalizing themselves between k-pop fans and largely performing to empty arenas. Following BTS success in the United States, many companies have attempted to replicate their success in building a fanbase at Western Countries and failed miserably. Some have even created groups specifically targeting the north american market. Many hope that BTS massive, cult-like following will give them a chance even if it's just as a second option. However, if you know how BTS fans act, you are aware of how inflexible and resistant they are towards other korean groups, even to a point many of them oppose labeling BTS as a k-pop group. Essentially, these attempts are fruitless because BTS fanbase, which comprises the large bulk of k-pop fans in those countries, only cares about BTS. If not for the COVID-19 pandemic essentially halting concerts, the same strategy would have been followed by many companies in 2020 and I can assure you many are waiting for concerts to be resumed to double down on that strategy. We currently have groups who actually enjoy an above average audience in those places such as Blackpink self-sabotaging their chart performances domestically by releasing their songs at 1 PM Korean time (midnight in the east coast of the United States) to get a full tracking week for Billboard charts such the hot 100. Releasing songs outisde of the main timeslot for releases in Korea (6 PM) hurts charting performance massively. Blackpink went from having over 850,000 listeners on the first 24 hours for 6 PM release "How You Like That" to around 300,000 listeners for "Lovesick Girls" just over 3 months later, which came out at 1 PM, simply because 6 PM is the hour with the biggest traffic at streaming sites, as people are leaving work to go to their homes, presenting lots of opportunities to listen to music, while at 1 PM most koreans are in the middle of their workday.  It's a great achievement for korean groups to be able to chart on Billboard but it's not their end goal, but many companies are mistakenly making it the main goal

You may be asking though, "why are you using Oh My Girl to prove your point? They only did five concerts in the U.S.". That's exactly why, because, unlike most groups, Oh My Girl learned from their ill-fated North American adventure and never tried it again. After some concerts in Brazil, the group returned to Korea and released its first 2019 comeback in May of that year, "The Fifth Season (SSFWL)", quickly followed up by summer single "Bungee (Fall In Love)". Considering the extremely awful year idol groups experienced in 2019, particularly during the summer, where korean charts were dominated by ballads and idols were nowhere to be seen, Oh My Girl's songs did not decline as much as other groups in the charts. But right after the release of "Bungee", the group would take the most career-altering decision of its carrer: joining Mnet's new competition show "Queendom".

Participating on the show wasn't a risk-free move. The group would face stiff competition in their search for success: an established top group in Mamamoo, rising rookies in (G)I-DLE, longtime veterans AOA, Lovelyz, a group with a decent fandom in Korea and Park Bom, former member of legendary girlgroup 2NE1. Also, korean competition shows have buried many careers in the past through their manipulative editing and Oh My Girl could just have become another casualty of these type of programs. At the start, things weren't rosy, matter of fact the group was on the receiving end of the first prominent gaffe of the show, when Park Bom failed to recognize who they were. However, the group seized the opportunity at the 4th episode. In this round, the group was assigned to perform a cover of a song from another Queendom participant. They picked Lovelyz 2016 hit "Destiny".

The cover quickly made waves and gathered massive praise. Oh My Girl went on to finish 1st in the cover songs round, beating established veterans Mamamoo and AOA in the process. The group, which had started Queendom with little fanfare, just, in the words of its leader Hyojung, "wanting their sunbaenims to recognize our hard work", was suddenly a dark horse contender to win it all. Ultimately, they finished 2nd to Mamamoo because of fan voting. Although Oh My Girl outscored them in the performances alone, their lack of a more established fanbase denied them the win. However, it was definitely not a 2nd place finish to be ashamed of, as the then 4-year old group would for sure leave the show bigger than it entered.

2020 could finally be the year Oh My Girl would get a the breakout they were hoping for. However, the year started with some hiccups. Member Jiho had been suffering from worsening anxiety conditions and had to take a break. Also, COVID-19 was starting to rise to pandemic status, forcing many groups to delay their comebacks. Despite these setbacks, the group kept working on its comeback, scheduling mini album "Nonstop" for April 27th.  As unusual as it is for idol groups to gather massive popularity on their 5th year (usually you already know if a group will succeed or fail by its 3rd year), Oh My Girl hoped the groundwork laid by "Queendom" and appearances on variety shows such as "Knowing Bros" as a group or at competitions such as "Mr. Trot", a show to find the next big male trot (a very popular music genre in Korea) singer, and where member Hyojung served as a mentor, would help them.

It did. The group whose fandom is called "Miracle" had arguably pulled one. "Nonstop" shot to the top of the main Korean charts and peaked at #2 in the Gaon digital Charts. Quite the jump for a group that in the previous five years had never cracked the top 10 and had only reached top 20 twice. At Melon, Korea's most popular streaming platform, Nonstop charted for 13 weeks inside the top 10. However, the unthinkable success story of Oh My Girl was far from over and it would take a turn that would finally get Oh My Girl into the top tier of girlgroups in Korea. IU, the most popular singer in the country, shared a story on Instagram listening to "Dolphin", a b-side from their album. That increased the group's visibility even further and the song later rose to sleeper hit status. Since them, Oh My Girl has never looked back, with both the group and the members receiving multiple gigs since their breakout. Member YooA has recently debuted solo while Arin has become a public's favorite and now is a MC for KBS Music Bank.

You may argue some of it was because of luck, IU isn't going to recommend a song from each group and even if she does it's not every time it will blow up. However, I disagree. Oh My Girl were only able to be lucky in the first place because they chased the right audience. After all "Nonstop" was charting well even before the group got IU's attention. Oh My Girl did the basic stuff most groups have seemed to forget over the past few years: presented themselves to the Korean public. They learned from their failure in their little US tour and went after those who could be willing to give them a chance, not after a mirage. In the end the best way for a k-pop group to secure itself is still doing traditional ways of promotion at their home country like holding fanmeets, going to TV shows, radio shows and landing fixed gigs in those places, not hiding itself from the public and staying on a fans-only bubble, or chasing niche audiences outside Korea that aren't able to give them a solid base and more opportunities domestically. Oh My Girl took the correct path and although obviously not every group will succeed, that's definitely the easiest way to do that, rather than going for what I call the "BTS mirage".