NewJeans Was the Future of K-Pop. Can KATSEYE Revolutionize That Vision?

A year ago, HYBE’s flagship girl group NewJeans declared war on the company. Now, a new girl group is looking to conceptualize HYBE’s vision for K-Pop without the “K”.

KATSEYE in a promo image for “GNARLY”.

This week KATSEYE, a global girl group formed by HYBE, released “Gnarly”, a pop song so polarizing that it immediately went viral. The single is loud, profane and, ultimately, a litmus test for K-Pop stans’ ability to handle absurdity. 

Not since NCT 127 released the unhinged comeback single “Sticker” has a song caused so much discussion – and disgust – amongst K-Pop stans. At times KATSEYE members sound like demented cheerleaders at a pep rally from hell. “Hottie hottie/ Like a bag of Takis/ I’m the shit!” Manon and Megan chant in the chorus. 

The lyrics, which were originally written by the Chinese American performance artist Alice Longyu Gao, check off multiple things that are “gnarly”, including boba tea and Tesla.  “Oh we’re going out tonight? Gang gang/ The song’s so lit, congratulations/ Gang gang,” Lara raps in one of the most quoted lines. 

With “Gnarly”, the group’s company HYBE is placing a large bet that global pop, not K-Pop, is the future for Korean music companies. “These days, I often say that we need to remove the ‘K’ from K-pop. K-Pop now needs to meet a broader consumer base in a wider market,” Bang Si-Hyuk, the company’s chairman, said in an interview with Maeil Business News. 

This strategy began with the formation of KATSEYE on the Netflix show Dream Academy. 

“We’re expanding like a U.S. business—we’re expanding catalogues, we’re expanding our labels,” Bang told the New Yorker in late 2024. “I don’t know if we can even call this K-pop anymore, what this will become.”

KATSEYE is an incredibly diverse group with Filipina, Black, Indian and Latina members. The members are also far more outspoken than their peers who come from strict K-Pop backgrounds. Last month, for instance, Lara, the group’s Indian member, came out as queer while chatting with fans on HYBE’s social media platform Weverse. 

This week, when the backlash for “Gnarly” began, Lara, Manon and Daniella were quick to push back on a livestream. “When we heard it for the first time,” Lara said, “we started screaming because the production is fire.” 

“Also I was just so down for the switch up,” Manon emphasized before taking a swipe at their past music. “We could’ve come out with a boring single. We could’ve give you ‘Touch’ 2.0”

NewJeans in a promo image for “Bubble Gum”

KATSEYE’s rise comes during a high stakes period for HYBE. Last year, the company’s most popular flagship girl group NewJeans staged an uprising and went rogue. The group uploaded a YouTube video where the members alleged mistreatment by company staff and alleged that HYBE was trying to keep them from working with NewJeans’ creative director Min Hee-Jin. 

Eventually, NewJeans announced that they would terminate their contract with HYBE and start their own group, NJZ. “There's just a very structural problem in K-pop in general, where companies don't really view their artists as actual human beings and rather see them as products,” Hanni told Time Magazine this year. As of this writing, the group is still in litigation with HYBE.

The group’s battle against HYBE was a stunning turn for NewJeans, particularly because for two years, they were the most popular and influential girl group in K-Pop.

There has always been an authenticity to NewJeans that has been challenging for other groups to replicate. ADOR, the group’s label which is owned by HYBE, took special care to market the girls as relatable: Their debut looks were refreshingly minimal. The girls were all styled with long black hair, light makeup and streetwear that resembled what trended on TikTok. Compared to the larger than life, avant garde looks of many idol groups, NewJeans was a much needed stab at relatability.

Their music, too, was unlike anything heard in K-Pop. “Attention”, their lead single, featured Jersey Club production. “Ditto”, their winter 2022 hit, brought in backbeat and house influences. For an industry that pushed brute force maximalism, NewJeans asked us to slow down. 

In the three years since their debut, there has been no group who has shifted the industry like NewJeans' debut did. Their popularity was organic, bolstered by brilliant music and visuals all engineered by Min. Yet what actually set NewJeans apart from their counterparts is that they were doing something wholly unique: There was no one making music like them. There was no one who could touch their style.

It might seem odd to compare the two, but I see KATSEYE and NewJeans as two sides of the same coin. In their attempts to change the industry, both have provided much needed jolts to what K-Pop can produce.

Only their end goals are vastly diferent: NewJeans is actually attempting to dismantle the industry’s power structure. KATSEYE, in contrast, is attempting to enhance Bang’s idea for the future of pop music.

It might seem odd to compare the two, but I see KATSEYE and NewJeans as two sides of the same coin. In their attempts to change the industry, both have provided much needed jolts to what K-Pop can produce.

Only their end goals are vastly diferent: NewJeans is actually attempting to dismantle the industry’s power structure. KATSEYE, in contrast, is attempting to enhance Bang’s idea for the future of pop music.

In many ways, KATSEYE is revolutionary simply for existing. They will face discrimination that many Korean groups will never encounter because of their diverse members. They will never be fully accepted by K-Pop stans because they are not a K-Pop group. And their members, who are so outspoken and so eager to push the idea of what a global group can be, are brave for attempting to push the boundaries of a rigid industry – even if they are being bolstered by the biggest company in K-Pop.  

If it seems like KATSEYE is swimming in contradictions, you would be correct. In some ways that ffeeds into the title of their new EP “Beautiful Chaos”. Perhaps nothing about KATSEYE is supposed to be linear. Perhaps the point is to confuse us. 

All of this, then, brings me back to Gao’s sharp, witty lyrics. It is punk to hear Gao shout with caustic sarcasm,  “Jealous of my mansion? The view is pretty fucking gnarly.” Gao, who is a queer, independent artist rising in the Los Angeles club scene, isn’t writing about herself. She’s writing about the billionaires; about those privileged enough to buy Teslas and stay in the Hollywood Hills. 

But what is KATSEYE’s point for “Gnarly”? Are they, like Gao, making fun of this level of wealth and self-centeredness? Or, in HYBE’s calculation to appeal to American listeners, are they promoting it? 

Watching the members defend the song on Weverse’s Livestream, I felt it was a little bit of both. 

“I told yall,” Daniella said with a satisfied smile,”you were gonna be gagged.”