TripleS – Girls Never Die. Before Modhaus had reassembled the former LOONA subunit ODD EYE CIRCLE, Jaden Jeong had been busy working with a new modular girl group called TripleS, in which fans could vote for members and tracks for subunits to work on. This audacious experiment peaked this year with ASSEMBLE24, which features a total of 24 members. And it works too. The K-pop equivalent of Tallis’s Spem In Alium.
ARTMS – Air and Virtual Angel. Speaking of former LOONA members’ activities. The two final “premium singles” from the DALL album dropped in May, and the key track here is Virtual Angel. Quite apart from it’s future pop bangeritude, the video pushes the LOONA hyperpop aesthetic to the extent that it’s entirely patched together with half-second cuts. So intense that some fans couldn’t watch it and Modhaus had to release a “human eye” version of the video with slower cuts. With this and ASSEMBLE24, Jaden Jeong really pushed the limits of experimental K-pop.
YVES – LOOP. The final member of LOONA to return to the music industry. Yves chose the solo route via an agency called Paix Per Mil, with a very designery aesthetic. Excellent gay disco vibes all around, pushing her ahead of another solo LOONA alumna, CHUU, whose releases last year were, we’re sorry to say, far better than in 2023.
aespa – Supernova and Armageddon. SM Entertainment’s aespa have matured into a serious proposition. We actually preferred their Billlie-esque weird period of My World last year, but in terms of future bangers, they don’t come much bangier than these two.
NewJeans – How Sweet. Second video of the year for NewJeans. Sugary sweet on the outside with a hidden bitterness: “how sweet it tastes, now that I’m without you” foreshadowing some of the controversy they would encounter later in the year…
XG – WOKE UP. Another excellent discovery of 2024. The XGALZ are all Japanese but they operate on a Korean label and mostly rap in English. Is it K-pop? X-pop? Who cares! Like YOUNG POSSE and BABYMONSTER they spearhead a tendency towards hard girl group hiphop. And to be honest, we’re totally here for this.
NB: no images on this page are the property of iotacism and are used for purposes of quotation on a fair use basis.