1.
BLACKPINK
Recently, a thread on Pann titled “The moment I realized how long BLACKPINK was on hiatus”
has gone viral and according to netizens, if YG keeps pushing back the girls’ comeback
while the group contract is clocking its expiration, BLACKPINK’s going irrelevant is just a matter
of time.
While that sounded like an exaggeration, some had done the Maths to prove that assuming
BLACKPINK would come back in March, which was the best scenario since the real life
situation could be way worse, the group’s hiatus still reach the mark of one year six
months—exactly equal to the time male idols must set aside for military service.
For those who weren’t too into Math and still couldn’t imagine how long their hiatus
has been, a netizen had pointed out that their last promotion Lovesick Girl was one month
before aespa’s debut.
Just within that amount of time, aespa has turned from one of the most questionable girl
groups into the leading act of gen4 and reaped various unprecedented achievements.
However, with all the Mathematic and comparative illustrations, people could still hardly feel
the length of BLACKPINK’s hiatus better than BLINKs because on social media, fans
themselves have created the… new concepts, teasers, and photobooks as they’ve been
so “hungry” for their idols’ comeback.
Some have even gone extra miles, creating new songs based on BLACKPINK’s old tracks
and new songs with BLACKPINK’s vibe to hang on the belief that BLACKPINK was still active.
Besides, there is another reason making netizens believe that BLACKPINK would soon go out of
style.
Instead of pushing the group as a whole like before, fans pointed out that the company
has recently been promoting the girls individually in various fields, from solo songs, models,
fashion to flying certain members to the most flamboyant parties in Hollywood to increase
their individual branding value.
The predictions of netizens are also seemingly fulfilling because most recently, when the
famous News1 South Korean outlet held a vote for “The most anticipated artist in 2022”
BLACKPINK only received ONE vote, which was equal to many less influential groups like
Purple Kiss, KARD, and Future Boys.
There was even an article flagrantly titled BLACKPINK was surpassed by IVE, whose votes
landed with 11, aespa and BTS with 10, and IU, a fourteen-year artist, with 6 votes.
So was BLACKPINK to blame for the fact that the group is probably going irrelevant soon?
Of course not and not at all.
Rather, it was the strategy of YG Entertainment that gradually pushed the girls off the cliff.
Even when many people asked K-Pop fans to stop blaming the management companies for
everything, it’s still hard to deny how YG played a big role in the potential breaking
of BLACKPINK.
While the group has been in the industry for six years, anyone could easily list out all
the songs they have ever released, which is actually almost impossible for other groups
because the number of tracks they produced were way bigger.
Plus, since other groups like TREASURE, aka the group that received the greatest debut
budget in the history of YG Entertainment, and WINNER, the group that people used to
never doubt they couldn't be as big as BIGBANG, also bore the same fate with BLACKPINK, it
was totally justified to see how the company is in charge of the worst to come.
2.
TWICE
Besides BLACKPINK, many netizens also believed the prime time of TWICE is about to end.
Earlier this year, a person, who also claimed to be an ex-ONCE, posted a long thread explaining
her thoughts as to why TWICE's career would go downhill very soon.
The first reason she mentioned came down to the fact that TWICE made so many comebacks
within a year but under the management of JYP Entertainment in later years, the group
failed for both releasing so many repetitive cutesy title songs and changing up their direction
so abruptly.
By that, it means instead of bringing to the table something new each time, the OP believed
they opted for almost recycling title songs under the same bubbly concept.
While this could be a good strategic move to consolidate the signature theme of the
group, the fact that JYP never bothered to make a tweak or incorporate new elements turned
this into a bad thing that made people grow out of TWICE for boredom.
Then when the pressure became heavier as the public taste of the girl-crush concept grew,
JYP devised a way worse strategy by all of a sudden switching up the girls’ concept
from bright to dark.
Another aspect of JYP Entertainment’s management strategy that made TWICE walk on thin ice
for the past time was said to be their shift on investment to ITZY—which was also the
thing that happened to MissA before.
As a person on Quora who claimed to still be a huge ONCE pointed out, though JYP wasn’t
blatantly ignore the old for the new like other big companies, they still shared several
things in common and she had started to see some signs of TWICE’s being ignored since
around 2020.
Because ITZY has become way more in style with the current public taste, she believed
JYP’s investment in TWICE has been dwindling and just like the way MissA was left to fend
for themselves the moment TWICE surpassed them, which was around 2016 forward, she saw
no reasons TWICE could avoid that same fate of their seniors.
Then came the second reason.
According to some people, TWICE’s vocal capabilities were kinda questionable and considering
how many rookies are raising the bar of live singing, being unable to sing live was a huge
minus point making people grow out of TWICE.
In retrospect, there were countless times the group became hot topics just for being
oddly shaking while singing.
The criticism has become so big that every time the group came back, the members would
become extremely anxious.
Probably until now, there were almost no encore stages of them that didn’t end up with strict
scrutiny and harsh criticism.
However, fans believe the reasons TWICE is poorly rated for their singing capabilities
are also a huge responsibility of JYP Entertainment for not giving them enough vocal training
and especially for forcing them to sing the tracks that were out of their range.
Instead of making songs for the group to shine, the company just forced on them some songs
based on a formula of success, a formula composed of many uneasy notes and chords that are almost
impossible to hit right when going hands in hands with TWICE’s hardcore choreography.
For example with tracks like Heart Shaker and Knock Knock, the public criticism about
TWICE wasn’t so harsh but ever since Likey, Dance The Night Away, Fancy and I Can’t
Stop Me, even Nayeon and Jihyo sometimes had difficulties in hitting their notes, let alone
other members.
The third reason came down to the members’ personal lives though these should have never
been the element counted into their successes.
However, the lives of K-Pop idols are becoming increasingly scrutinized and analyzed, factoring
into their popularity.
As pointed out by a person on Quora, with multiple dating “scandals”, with the earliest
one of Jihyo, Momo and most recent being Chaeyoung, it makes sense that their reputation might
have been impacted a little.
Then, two members of TWICE, Mina and Jeongyeon, were also on a long hiatus for mental health,
which was also a topic kind of touchy in South Korea, so it’s nothing much of a surprise
to see their influence took another hit for that.
The most obvious proof for their dwindling reputation was that with the promotion SCIENTIST,
TWICE’s digital performances were off.
After 24 hours, SCIENTIST was still seen at the very bottom of most domesticall music
charts.
Except for the second rank on Bugs, the song only ranked at 31st on iChart, 66th on Melon,
and worst, 88th on Genie.
Later on, SCIENTIST took even a deeper nosedive to 144th on Genie’s Daily and 95th on Melon
chart.
As reported by Kstat, these signs proved that not only the public but even many ONCEs were
discontent with the comeback.
Usually, when a song received poor reaction from netizens, many other big groups would
still have their fans’ support through music streaming.
However, it’s not like that in Twice’s case.
3.
Red Velvet
Unfortunately, Red Velvet is also here and this makes the list all about the gen3 girl
groups of Big3.
While there aren’t as many reasons making people believe Red Velvet will go irrelevant
as BLACKPINK and TWICE, this prediction remains there mainly because of two reasons.
Firstly, as SM Entertainment is kinda notorious for their “new one in, old one out” practice,
the fact that aespa has been going strong as the leading act of gen4 and making tons
of money makes people believe Red Velvet will soon be left to fend for themselves.
Just like what SM did to f(x) when Red Velvet debuted, the company will very likely invest
least in Red Velvet when aespa has come.
Secondly, as the members have been focusing on their individual careers where Joy, Irene
and Yeri are devoted to acting and Seulgi and Wendy are spending more time on their
solos, it will probably be very long until the next big comeback of the group.
However, as more and more gen4 rookies are stirring the atmosphere and even those coming
from medium and small companies could garner fair attention, like IVE and H1-KEY, this
long break of Red Velvet very likely takes a hit on them and if that is the case, it’s
hard for people to not believe Red Velvet’s going irrelevant soon is an exaggeration.
So, do you think these assumptions are going to apply or people are just being too pessimistic?
Comment down below to share your thoughts with us.
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