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".
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