A huge part of the success of NewJeans — the most creatively promising new K-pop act of the past two years — has been its music videos: stylistically sophisticated, vividly colorful, palpably joyful. Starting with music that deploys top-shelf songwriting buoyed by production savvy about global microtrends, the group developed a singular aesthetic to go with it, drawing equally from high fashion, lived-in nostalgia and contemporary cuteness. So it was striking when, a couple of weeks ago, the group released a video performance unlike any that preceded it.
In a live broadcast on a burner YouTube account, the group’s five members — Danielle, Haerin, Hanni, Hyein and Minji — spoke for almost 30 minutes about their dissatisfaction with their parent company, Hybe. They particularly focused on how it had de-emphasized the role of the group’s executive producer, Min Hee-jin, in their work. Here was a group putting its external image and its internal leverage at risk to argue for their creative lives.
It is an infrequent scenario at this level in K-pop, a genre and business in which careful choreography — of music, visuals and star behavior — is crucial to the power of the art..