Supergroup of the Month

Way back when the concept of Produce 101 was immediately taken by the idea. Early into my retirement from being a person who was very annoying about listening to rock music, I really saw the potential in the idea. In those circles the term ‘supergroup’ was thrown around a lot for lineups of men I didn’t know from Adam, yet the appeal of ephemeral projects like Isles & Glaciers is unmatched.

Of course, kpop already had groups that fit that bill in terms of the brief cultural impact of Dazzling Red and Mystic White units created from members of Kara, Sistar, Secret, After School, and 4Minute for the 2012 SBS Gayo Daejeon. Another example that comes to mind of Five Girls(?) the group whose debut fell through featuring girls who went on to become G.NA, Yubin of Wonder Girls, Uee of After School, Hyosung of Secret, and Jiwon of Spica.

All it takes is a moment of brilliance, a memorable song and performance, or a stacked lineup with potential nobody got to see (maybe the other universe where those four girl group members never went on to join those teams of varying success can let us know how things are going over there) for people to think back to it as a beautiful memory of a time in their life which may never have actually come to pass.

Naturally, there have been countless groups who have come since, but the ones I immediately think of are from a post Produce 101 world. That isn’t what this section is about. The ripples which floated Produce 101 into our lives already existed before all the splashing around the award winning (in my house) survival show has done since.

An easy comparison, or target of near plagiarism, that people thought of upon hearing the concept of Produce 101 was Japan’s AKB48 (or 48G in general) with all the voting and focus on the ‘centre’: a term I had never noticed on an idol profile with the same ubiquity as ‘face’, ‘lead vocal’, ‘visual’, ‘main vocal’, ‘vocal’, ‘lead rapper’ blah blah blah BPD101 (Before Produce 101).

I’m not going to discount the AKB48 comparisons and copying because Produce 48 didn’t just happen for no reason. But what I really have never stopped thinking about is the goal, the intention behind convincing 50(?) companies to donate their talent to make someone else money.

In the end, the produce series was all about making a single group filled with future kpop juggernauts much in the same way as Five Girls, or Dazzling Red and Mystic White if they’d come before those groups were famous.

IOI, the winners plucked from Produce 101, were totally kneecapped by a confluence of misfortune. Firstly, my beef with their ‘1 year contract’ (which must have retrospectively included the trainees’ time filming Produce 101 itself unless Korea has a different definition of a year to me) will outlive me. Secondly, IOI was blocked from promoting on every music show aside from MCountdown because the other broadcasting companies saw it as free promo for a competitor. Thirdly, the companies of the winning girls were abysmal. Pledis, Jellyfish, and Fantagio didn’t even try; Starship, MNH, and MBK (of all companies) made a moderate attempt; Redline and JYP gave up their girls to disappear into the aether or sporadically do something (I’m sure you know which is which). In short, the format was too experimental. The companies wanted their cash cows back and when they snatched those girls back and tried to form groups around them they had no idea how to manage the weight of success bearing down on two sets of shoulders (or just two shoulders total of you were Chaeyeon or Yeonjung).

Weirdly, I know money must say a different thing, but in this attention economy I can’t say that winning Produce 101 was a surefire route for success when compared to ultimate Kpop supergroup IBI (Sohee from Nature, Chaekyung from April, Hyeri who was in IdolM@ster KR doing something or other, AND the ex-creative director of Kiof in one group??? And Suhyun probably does stuff after releasing that one song years ago, right? (I’m kidding, I think she’s going to be in a drama! I’ll be watching!!!)).

I’m sure Wanna One came out of Produce 101 Season 2 and their winners’ contracts in a far better place but I wouldn’t know because I stopped paying attention once their group promotions wrapped up. IZ*ONE certainly were better off after Produce 48 and seeing the success of IVE, Lesserafim and the soloists, I feel that their stories after the fact were much more in line with what the guy who wanted to create “healthy porn for uncles” must truly have actually wanted when envisioning Produce 101.

There is, however, a group I think is going to do just as well as IZ*ONE and they’re going to do it organically (or as organically as possible in the unforgiving terrain of Kpop).

I’m sure you’ve heard someone encourage you to ‘Stan LOONA’ at some point in your life. Did you do as they said? Whether you did or not, you probably heard about all the legal issues they went through when trying to escape their unfair contracts with Blockberry creative.

With a unique Girl of the Month concept which has fully cemented the scourge of pre-debut releases we will never escape until the end of days, LOONA were always cutting edge.

I do agree that in an ideal world, all 12 girls could have continued as a group even without the LOONA/이달의 소년 name, but at this moment in time we can’t say that would have been for the best. If that had been the case we wouldn’t be on Chuu’s legendary run of mini albums, we wouldn’t have Yves’ I Did:Bloom (Deluxe), we wouldn’t have Loossemble’s magnum opus TTYL, and we certainly wouldn’t have had ARTMS reunite with Jayden Jeong to do a bunch of stuff that sounds great but I can’t bear to look at for the health of my optic nerves.

I’ll admit that the present isn’t exactly what we’d want for Loossemble after CTDENM suddenly closed down, but they all seem to be on their way to doing something. After the turmoil of waiting for the girls to get out of their contracts, I can definitely look upon this time of uncertainty in a much more positive light.

LOONA in its original form was a Kpop powerhouse which inspired, for better or worse, rabid fantatacism in its fans. Stan LOONA became a meme at the most basic level, infecting the minds of people with no contact to Kpop (if fake online stories are anything to go by). LOONA unfortunately sparked the trends of endless pre-debut releases, detailed lore, and (less unfortunately) taking legal action against evil corporations.

Whilst we didn’t need to vote and analyse evil edits to support LOONA in their formation, the deep connection between fans and idols was built into the fandom rapidly.

As organically as anything is allowed to be in Kpop, LOONA was certainly a supergroup that won’t be forgotten any time soon.