I only started listening to kpop very recently (around 5 years ago?) and I’ve witnessed firsthand how the quality dropped from bad to worse. There’s absolutely no substance in an industry that simply follows trends and its whole existence is now based on product placement and invites to sponsored events. As the years move onward, I noticed that there’s an insane push into making TikTok music, aka a rather average/bad song with one 10s long verse that’s catchy.

Katseye, lesserafim and aespa are the prime examples of this. Hell, not even ILLIT or newjeans went as low as they did, despite both groups being from the same company as the first two groups I mentioned. HYBE. God I hate HYBE.

Now all we get is noise music, and it’s not like the ‘genre’ in itself is bad. I love NMIXX and Stray Kids, because at least they put some sauce in the noise music they release. There’s intention, artistry and quality. There's good choreography, there’s conceptualization, there’s great vocals. NMIXX’s Blue Valentine even escapes the usual noise music, but O.O was still as good despite the awful product placement. The thing I’m trying to say is that at least you have artists that actually sing. Artists singing a ‘shitty song’ but have talent and don’t debut with an invitation to the Paris fashion week already in their pockets.

All of kpop has one goal, and it’s to go viral. I can tell. Everyone is chasing that, especially Katseye. No group is free from trying to grasp the virality that will make them top the charts. Now. It’s about time to move on from the catchy noisy 2 minute long song that only has a grand total of 30 seconds where it’s good, and it’s good solely because you watched the talented fans dance it on your FYP.

I’m tired of having those groups dominating the field. And it’s even worse because I know they dominate because their parent company is manipulating the charts and the public opinion. And don’t get me started on aespa, I really despise that group.

Artists that don’t sing, they lipsync. They’re ‘great singers’ but you’ll never hear them sing live. They don’t perform at all, they’re stiff as hell and they don’t even have the choreography to defend them and say ‘it’s because it’s a hard choreo guys!’. They get millions of botted views so they apply for big awards. The awards are handed to them with the change money and then all the new groups follow the same boring trend.

Everyone chases those 10s on TikTok, the quality continues dropping, and then the actually good groups are tossed aside and punched down.

And then when you have a quality group perform poorly on the charts, the overly confident fanbase starts calling THAT group bad or mediocre. And then they go and only listen to the title track of the album because ‘the other songs are bad, actually’. Honestly I’m just talking about aespa here. Man, I hate that group.

Anyways, I’m tired of pretending this is not partially caused by SM and HYBE. I’m starting to wonder if those ‘great groups’ that are unique to those companies are actually good. The more I look at it, the more I’m convinced they’re actually a bunch of mediocre idols who have a big fish sponsoring them.