Lisa Apparently the whole world was watching Lisa
after she made the solo debut with LALISA but much to your surprise, the arrays of opinions
weren’t as positive as expected. Yes, I, and many people, agree that she has done a
perfect job considering how the song portrays her empowered independent woman image but
netizens believed this title single was an unsavable flop had it not been performed by
Lisa.
Weird, right? Her song is trending worldwide and even debuted straight to the US chart
Pop Rising on Spotify, so what does that even mean?
Actually, people have their points so don’t be triggered and you’ll see why.
First, as Lisa is the third member to debut as a solo artist in BLACKPINK, people right
away put her on the scale with Jennie and Rosé, and much to their disappointment, all
that lingering after listening to the song was the feeling YG Entertainment being “half-ass”
with Lisa. Although LALISA is the song converging many
producers that help make up the name of BLACKPINK like TEDDY, Bekuh BOOM and 24, netizens found
it hard to believe how the track was super lame and almost monotonous.
Except for Lisa's rapping and the chorus shouting out her own name, the rest was so-so, the
melody was all over the place, the beat-drop was recycled from lots of BLACKPINK’s songs
and even the lyrics were also full of cliche flexings.
Of course, this was by no means Lisa’s fault but rather YG Entertainment and the producer
team’s. To many Knets, YG seemingly gave zero care about choosing the song that best
highlighted Lisa’s capabilities. Instead, all they did was to throw out a random song
with the belief her influences alone would make everything work.
You know how people often say “the truth hurts”? That’s 100% true here since netizens
even believed only Lisa’s fans would support such a random, disjointed product. Even concept-wise,
the reaction was also not good because though they admire how the company must have spent
a fortune on this overwhelming amount of backgrounds, the big picture was just as disjointed as
the melody itself.
While Jennie and Rosé also had multiple scenes and wore various different outfits in their
MVs, people could still see how all the dots were connected to create a big picture; like
for Jennie, it was a typical fancy high-teen image and for Rosé, it was all about a soft,
sentimental artist trying to find her life purpose.
However, in the case of Lisa, many netizens had questioned themselves what eventually
was the concept she debuted with because the transitions in pictures were too abrupt. Even
when you’re in love with Lisa, I think you can still see how people really had a point
here since after opening the MV with a heavy BLACKPINK’s vibe scene, things started to
switch randomly from a China-downtown background to the FBI kinda thing, then to racing girl
in the desert, to the bright Ice-Cream-era-esque scene, then to the Thai’s queen and ended
with a modern dancer image.
Cookie Right at the beginning of 2021, KPOP was already
hit with a shocking decision from HR Entertainment when they decided to debut a new girl group
Cookie with the average age of only 13 years old.
Image-wise and concept-wise, apparently the act fit pretty well with the public taste
with all five members having pretty visuals following the bright, naive image. However,
considering their age and the notoriously complicated nature of the industry, netizens
all agreed to not support these girls and asked HR Entertainment to stop pushing things
too far before it became illegal. They also asked the company to let the members have
more time enjoying childhood or at least, more time in the practice room if their dream
of becoming an idol was that big. There were also opinions saying the idea of
debuting a girl group with that average age was gross and ridiculous since not only they
would soon be blasted with hard criticism but also sexualized by many creeps lurking
in the industry.
Even when people looked at the debut from a professional point of view, they still believed
it was a terribly mistaken move by HR Entertainment because for this age range, the group would
be stuck with the same cute songs and choreography for a long time and as expected, the audience
would soon grow out of them for boredom.
Plus, since the group couldn’t work around the clock and attend promotional activities
late at night, which were all the compulsory things for all KPOP idols, especially those
from small companies like HR Entertainment, netizens also predicted Cookie would soon
flop and there was nothing that could be done to fix this future.
NTX March 2021 seems to be a real controversial
month of KPOP as also around this time, Victory Company debuted NTX—a ten-member line up
boy group with Kiss The World. While they could have started on a bright note with the
theme supposedly to highlight the diversity of people around the globe, things soon turned
for the worse after the group brought traditional clothings of different nations to wear as
costumes.
In fact, it was even before the release of their MV and just at the time when Ji Seong
and Seung Won’s teasers wearing traditional clothings of Japan and Africa got uploaded,
netizens had already come at them with all the harsh words and accused the group of cultural
appropriation.
On Twitter, it’s not hard to catch people throwing hands with all sorts of comments
like NTX’s career had ended before they even debuted, both the agency and the group
had lost their sanity, the members looked like a mess and they were stepping on many
ethnicities for the sake of fame and money. Some even called the group with the N-word
and wished them to soon get out of the industry—and yes, they suffered from all of this without
even getting one foot into the door.
Honey Popcorn Back in 2018, the whole industry was shook
to the root after hearing a small company KYUN CREATE would debut a girl group with
a full Japanese member line-up. However, you know what’s the most unexpected thing here
in the story? Though Knets are well-known for the negative impression with foreign idols,
the main reason Honey Pop was boycotted had little to do with their nationality; rather,
it was the fact that all three members Yua Mikami, Moko Sakura and Miko Matsuda were
former… J.A.V actresses [chèn meme Damn]. And with the incredibly strict standard of
netizens, apparently you can see how the group was literally mortified with harsh words.
Even when they hadn’t made their debut and all people knew about them was through some
searches online, the criticism was already pointing at how nasty the past of these girls
was and how they would forever stain the image of KPOP idols with such ridiculous greed.
As you can expect, things only get worse from that point on and after their Bibidi Babidi
Boo debut MV was released, the hate was so bad that a petition with more than 35,000
signatures was immediately sent to the Blue House with the content: “Please don’t
let these J.A.V actresses become part of KPOP.”
Many netizens also agreed Honey Popcorn should be banned from the industry for good because
firstly, it made no sense for a country that prohibited pornographies like South Korea
yet still consented the existence of a former J.A.V-actresses-based act in KPOP and second,
the image of Honey Popcorn would further sexualize other girl groups and served as a spit in
the face of #MeToo movement prevailing in both South Korea and around the world.
PRITZ Debuting in 2014 under Pandagram, PRITZ immediately
drew all the attention not only in South Korea but also from many international KPOP fans.
Sounds like a sounding start, right? Well, things are in fact of the total opposite since
after PRITZ made their first public appearance with their debut song Too diffcult Oh-Eh-Oh-Eh,
they received a huge backlash for wearing the armbands with an undeniably striking resemblance
to the Hakenkreuz used by the German Nazi party.
The fierce criticism came at PRITZ like a storm with many people blasting them for the
lack of common knowledge of world history, for being a “national embarrassment” and
at one point, the act was even labeled “traitors” for popularizing the party that literally
burned down the world. Apparently many also understood all these
things were just for noise marketing but even so, they should have never crossed the line
so shamelessly like that as once the news got out, the whole image of South Korea would
also be put at stake. The hated then not only aimed at the act alone
but also at their management company—Pandagram, as people started to call them out for having
“no brains” and the shameless balls to mess with both Europeans and Asians.
However, can you guess what was the most unexpected move of Pandagram after the harsh criticism
broke out? While people thought that the company would make changes to the debut outfits, the
company actually insisted on keeping this controversial element and defended that “We
don’t want to change these outfits now, because to do so would be to give in to the
accusations that this is some kind of noise marketing stunt.”
Do you think Knets would buy that? Of course not.
After that press release, people even had more reasons to believe the company was stepping
on all the limits and risking even the national image to push PRITZ’s reputation.
So, do you think people were overreacting or all these names just got whatever they
deserved for not being wise with their debut concept? Comment down below to share your
thoughts with us. Also, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe to BeBossTV for
more interesting content. Thank you for watching!