All coming from big agencies and having established a super-duper solid fandom willingly to support
regardless of what, these acts’ most recent comebacks still encountered a heated discussion
as according to netizens, what they got was way below the par and their expectations.
In fact, not only netizens but many fans have also voiced their disappointment so let’s
dive in and see what is really happening to these comebacks.
BLACKPINK’s Pink Venom
Breaking all the records set by no one but the version of them two years ago, BLACKPINK
has taken over the Internet with their Pink Venom.
When the music was yet to be released and only their photo teasers were posted, people
had already gone crazy just by the thought that they finally saw OT4 after four years.
The fact that YG Entertainment spent a bunch of money to dye Seoul pink by putting up big
pink banners and running pink LED lights around Namsan tower also received lots of good reactions
from netizens.
According to them, the massive scale of Pink Venom’s marketing scheme was probably way
more than enough to make this comeback a big bop.
And just like what many predicted, history repeated and BLACKPINK once again set new
records with this comeback.
Most recently, Spotify has recognized Pink Venom as the most streamed K-Pop song in 2022.
On the very first day of release, the track already had 10,79 million listenings on the
platform, beating one of the most meaningful tracks of BTS, Yet To Come.
Not only that, Pink Venom also debuted straight onto no.1 of Spotify's Top 50 Global, being
the only track of a K-Pop act to do so.
On iTunes, BLACKPINK was also ranked first in 70 countries and most importantly, maintained
their top position in two pickiest countries: the States and the UK.
In sharp contrast to the doubt that BLACKPINK could only do well off-board and failed to
maintain their heat in the homeland due to countless monster rookies of gen4, the group
was also seen first in established music charts like Melon, Buds, VIBE, Genie Music, and many
more.
On Youtube, they recorded 86.2 million views in just one day, became the girl group with
most-viewed MV in K-Pop within 24 hours, as well as had Pink Venom trending in 57 nations.
Regarding physical album sales, BLACKPINK has recorded 1.5 MILLION pre-orders for their
2nd full-album “Born Pink” in just six days and when YG Entertainment confirmed that
BLACKPINK would make a comeback, their share price surged 6.3%!
Despite all the records and achievements, there were still negative reactions toward
BLACKPINK’s latest comeback, saying that it was rather disappointing and underwhelming,
and not worthy of 2 years waiting in desperation.
Some said they even felt like the promotion, regardless of the spectacular visual and exhaustive
budget, was done to stop the whining of fans rather than to really elevate the girls’
image.
First was the melody.
To many netizens, the whole track was just a remix of Kill This Love, aka the song BlackPink
released three years ago.
Especially the structure of the song, the fact that Pink Venom followed the same flow
as: Jennie opened the song, then Lisa, then Jisoo and Rosé and then the rapper duo Jen-Li
also said to bore people out.
At this point, they had given up understanding why BLACKPINK had to stick to their success
formula for too long despite having already been a top-famous girl group and achieved
countless triumphs.
Others believed had the girls debuted in gen4, they would have been left way far behind for
the repetitive image.
Still, the most annoying part about Pink Venom according to netizens wasn’t the melody
but rather the constant cut with no sense.
While the budget for this MV was huge and everyone could see that, the way the MV was
put together was said to be exhausting as it not only wore the eyes out but also made
people confused as to where to focus.
The fact that every scene was cut after two seconds also wasted the visual of the members
and the sophisticated background.
You can see this most clearly when watching this behind-the-scenes video.
In this footage, Jisoo was recording in a room decorated with lots of skulls but in
the MV, all people could see was she plainly walking through the room and not a single
skull was seen.
Guess the creative team must be really mad after seeing their hard work displayed so
poorly like this.
While the achievements of Pink Venom were apparent, the so-called failure of the track
was also noticeable as on August 20, NewJeans’ Attention went back to no.1 on Melon (aka
the largest music subscription service in South Korea) and took down Pink Venom.
Considering the massive popularity of BLACKPINK and also the fact that their comeback track
was still overtaken by a several-week-old rookie, the belief that Pink Venom was the
worst promotion of BLACKPINK wasn’t a subjective opinion anymore.
SNSD’s Forever 1
Coming back after five years of hiatus, which was also the time when several members departed
from SM Entertainment and ventured into their own dream, SONEs were thrilled more than ever
to see SNSD again appear together as a group.
However, not all SONEs remained the same excitement when listening to their track FOREVER 1 as
on one hand, the song was said to be extremely nostalgic and “SNSD” but on the other
hand, it was said to be straight-up forgettable and plain.
Still, let’s talk about how positive the reactions were to this song first.
To some fans, FOREVER 1 was indeed a track that helped them relive the beautiful past
as not only the melody was very “gen2 K-Pop” but the visual of the MV was also very reminiscent
of the group’s debut hit INTO THE NEW WORLD.
However, the most amazing thing about this comeback was that SONEs could see and listen
to their idols again as a group.
Especially for the harmonization part, some said SNSD has proven well why they were the
benchmark of group harmonization in K-Pop and overall, this was the most perfect comeback
they had ever seen.
Besides, SNSD was also said to serve a whole visual party as despite their being in the
industry for fifteen years, no significant changes in the girl’s appearance were seen.
Their skin was still glassy smooth, figures were still slender and of course, their energy
was just as dynamic as they were years ago.
However, there were also countless negative reactions aimed at this comeback and according
to them, the whole song was way too underwhelming and outdated.
Especially for an act that has already had it all, there were even fewer reasons to go
for such a plain and safe choice in the context that SONEs had waited 5 years and SNSD was
celebrating their fifteen-year anniversary.
Of course it’s true that the melody was very nostalgic but it was also too generic
that listeners struggled to remember what they had just listened to.
That was not to mention how the girls were all in their adulthood but still, the theme
SM Entertainment gave them was rather childish and cheap-money.
Some even straight up called FOREVER 1 a skippable song made for survival shows like Produce101
and its structure was so all-over-the-place that they could easily tell SM Entertainment
didn’t bother to invest in this comeback at all.
Based on the neon lights and all the flashy, newtro elements shown in the teaser, many
SONEs said that they had expected something like SNSD being queens stepping out of the
KWANGYA world or at least, having something futuristic incorporated into their MV.
The disappointment was so great that on Youtube, there was one video titled “Girls’ Generation
needs to retire (forever 1 review)” and despite the defensive comment section saying
that FOREVER 1 didn’t have to be a banger as it was simply a gift to SONEs, you can
still see lots of fans disappointed through countless comments agreeing with the OP:
aepsa’s GIRLS
Becoming the most-selling girl group with over 1.6 million album sales in the very first
week and in case you haven’t known, they even beat BLACKPINK’s The Album, the promotion
of GIRLS has been another successful era of aespa.
However, according to some, GIRLS was still a pretty flop promotion compared to what they
had expected.
This opinion was actually not subjective and even backed up with real-figure evidence.
Still, let’s talk about the positive reactions first.
Besides the impressive album sales, GIRLS also came first on the Worldwide iTunes Album
Chart, debuted at no.13 on the Worldwide iTunes Song chart and trended in many countries.
In homeland, the song also garnered great attention by debuting on no.4 on Bugs, no.13
on MelOn Top 100, no.14 FLO, and no.14 Genie.
Of course this didn’t look so good relative to the achievements of NEXT LEVEL but considering
the very niche market and the experimental melody of GIRLS, these were all amazing results.
Still, many believed GIRLS was nothing but a step-back in aespa’s career because compared
to other girl groups, especially younger girl groups in smaller companies, it’s clear
that aespa didn’t do so well.
After going up to no.11 on MelOn, GIRLS was pushed down to no.12 and left in the dust
by megahits like TOMBOY, SNEAKERS, LOVE DIVE and most especially, Attention by New Jeans.
The success of GIRLS on the international front was also said to be superficial as just
one day after entering the Global Chart on Spotify, aespa was kicked out of it, making
them the very first girl group to have this awkward achievement.
One Twitter user said that many international K-Pop fans also dislike the promotion and
one of the reasons fueling the hate was that SM Entertainment interfered in the search
results too much.
According to foreign K-Pop fans, when they search for ITZY and BLACKPINK in English,
the very first MVs popped up were those of aespa and based on this result, some believed
the promotion was probably too flopped that SM had to interfere that much.
In one article where two managing directors of SM had a sit down with Daum, they said
aespa was the crucial keyword determining the future value of the whole company.
However, in the comment section, most comments were about asking SM to stop Kwangya world
as well as looking at the results of GIRLS’s promotion before making such a statement.
So, do you think these promotions are bops or flops and why so?
As for many netizens considering these comebacks disappointing, do you think they are expecting
too much?