“We had this vision to take the K out of K-pop and make it global.” This is the sales pitch that begins Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, a documentary about the titular girl group, who are signed to Korea’s HYBE (BTS) and America’s Geffen (Olivia Rodrigo). Later in the film, the CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M proclaims their endeavor unprecedented, explaining that the labels are applying K-pop training practices but “doing it in pop music.” They seem confused. Are they adding the “K” or removing it? Is K-pop not “pop music”? Ignore the marketing tactics and the music tells all: KATSEYE, frequently touted as a uniquely global girl group, are awfully ordinary.
In many ways KATSEYE are the most unexceptional HYBE group to date, highly emblematic of mainstream K-pop’s trajectory over the past decade. The success of the music competition show Produce 101 ushered in numerous acts formed via reality television. KATSEYE originated from another show, Dream Academy, and the members—as is common nowadays—hail from different countries and speak multiple languages. Sophia is from the Philippines; Manon is from Switzerland; Yoonchae is from Korea; and Daniela, Lara, and Megan are from the U.S. Even so, their songs are almost entirely in English. Without any songs in Korean, they’re presumably not K-pop. And as the Korea-based, ethnically Japanese girl group XG proved before them, if you’re singing in English, the type of pop music you make becomes hard to classify.
When music fans talk about “pop,” or use the glaringly specious “pure pop,” they are often referring to what I call A-pop, or American pop music. Just as “American” can be wielded as a nebulous term that ignores minority groups, so too is A-pop defined by its nonspecificity and de facto whiteness (“pure pop” rarely describes R&B, for instance). If there is rapping, it’s stripped of regional signifiers. If there’s a dembow riddim, it’s not Jamaican or Latin so much as in the lineage of Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.” KATSEYE’s second EP, BEAUTIFUL CHAOS, often falls into this terrible A-pop pitfall: pan-global mush. The bilingual “Gabriela” is the worst offender; it has a reggae bassline and Spanish guitar, but they’re in service of something nondescript—inoffensive music for the incurious listener. (It was previously offered to Rita Ora.)
For decades K-pop groups have thrived in their willingness to be derivative, finding success in a domestic market by trafficking interpretations of the “real thing.” K-pop’s first generation was endearingly slapdash in their stylistic homage, with songs frequently anchored by karaoke-ready balladry. Genre agnosticism and shameless inauthenticity became the prevailing methodologies thereafter, and there is always something fascinating in the gap between original copy and ostensible ripoff. Though BEAUTIFUL CHAOS is a more mature offering than the mawkish teen pop of KATSEYE’s debut EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong), its game of “spot the difference” is often a matter of “sounds like X but worse.” “M.I.A,” for example, imagines the most sedate version of “like JENNIE,” itself a degree of separation removed from the Brazilian phonk it’s indebted to. KATSEYE’s chanting can’t mask the anodyne spirit, and the song limps to the finish line. If K-pop sounds fresh, it’s because it treats established formulas as suggestions; KATSEYE’s music sounds generic because it treats the well-trod as bullseyes.
KATSEYE’s problem is a familiar one in A-pop: They’re tasteful and aggressively risk-averse, unable to shed the requisite self-consciousness to embrace novelty or sentimentality. (This year, KIIRAS’ “KILL MA BO$$” and NMIXX’s “High Horse” are K-pop’s standard bearers in these modes, respectively.) Recently, one could trace the differences between PinkPantheress and NewJeans and Erika de Casier, carving out theories for the cultural nuances that explain each act’s approach to intimacy. KATSEYE’s works don’t invite such inquiry because they don’t belong to a particular culture. Instead of transcending borders, a humdrum EDM ballad like “Mean Girls” feels most at home on Spotify’s mood playlists. A decade ago, a song in this lane would’ve veered toward trop-house or whatever the Chainsmokers were doing, but now there’s gauzy atmosphere, hushed vocals, and muted kicks approximating Jersey club. Still, “Mean Girls” has one thing over any K-pop song: Less beholden to the industry’s conservatism, KATSEYE sing an unambiguously pro-trans lyric (“God bless the t-girls/And all the in-between girls”).
Part of why KATSEYE’s music is so disappointing is that they clearly occupy a fertile space. Take a look at the Hot 100 throughout the past few years and you’ll see pop in numerous forms: R&B and EDM, country and rap, corridos and reggaeton, Afrobeats and K-pop. KATSEYE doesn’t neatly slot into any of these styles, and they’re doing what they can to fill in the gaps. The issue is that even though BEAUTIFUL CHAOS has five distinct songs, they scan as haphazard attempts at seeing what sticks. Their last EP’s best song was the perfectly fine “Touch,” an A-pop take on K-pop’s “hook song” formula. The closest analogue here is the blippy “Gameboy,” but without the ultra-repetitive chorus, it sounds like little more than an Ariana Grande reject. There’s no honing of craft or style or identity on this second project; KATSEYE remain aspirational jacks of all trades.
Ultimately, KATSEYE have the unenviable task of making new songs in a musically unadventurous niche. It’s why “Gnarly,” an abrasive hyperpop song co-written by Alice Longyu Gao, is the most interesting of their career. It’s big and dumb and obnoxious; in other words, it has a personality. It recalls SOPHIE’s maxim that “all pop music should be about who can make the loudest, brightest thing.” And while it isn’t fully satisfying as a song itself (Gao’s original snippet appeared on TikTok, which suits a track this silly and short), “Gnarly” provides a glimpse into what KATSEYE could do to live up to their promise as a global girl group. They have the potential to be more than K-pop or A-pop, but they’ll have to upend musical conventions first. Otherwise, they’ll keep treating trends as stylistic dead ends.
