In December 2021, writer Alex McMillan created the “Yankee Candle’s Stages of Abstraction.” They described a series of increasingly abstract Yankee Candle scents. The lower levels represent physical objects or locations (Black Cherry), while higher levels move further into abstraction, representing “intrinsic properties” and “personal experiences” (The Last Paradise, Sunny Daydream). The highest level of abstraction is a Yankee Candle called Sweet Nothings. Its wax is purple, and its label depicts iridescent, slightly out-of-focus spheres, which might be anything from soap bubbles to refracted spots of light.
A month earlier, South Korean music conglomerate HYBE and American record label Geffen announced a joint venture, calling for applications to audition for a “global girl group” that would adhere to the training techniques of K-pop. 120,000 submissions were narrowed down to 20 candidates who, after a combination of fan voting and judge assessment, were trimmed to the 6 original members of KATSEYE.
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Level 2: The scent represents a physical object in a specific state, where the aroma represented is not necessarily that of the object, but rather representative of that object’s state
A reality show within a reality show. In Dream Academy, twenty young women in black athleisure sit on wooden chairs, listening as a disembodied host—a white circle on a black background—lets them know which candidates will advance to the next mission. Two young women, whose dancing, singing, and ineffable charm were least affirmed by fan voting, are eliminated. A brief eruption of shock and grief, and then the screen cuts back to the white circle. “Thank you for your unwavering hard work and boundless passion,” it says. The video ends.
On Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, the Netflix series that more exhaustively documented the process of making the group, including the training that preceded the survival show, the cameras keep rolling. Young women hug each other and sob. Adéla, a nineteen-year-old singer from Slovakia, has been eliminated. Her eyes remain dry: “I cried my tears in this program already.” The candidates crowd around her in a heaving pile. Two episodes later, the same scene repeats. Close-up after close-up, some with faces in hands, some with single tears trickling down their cheeks.
KATSEYE’s formation was a fascinating mashup of K-pop and A-pop principles. KATSEYE would train like K-pop stars, gathering a first wave of fans through an interactive formation process, then hit the ground running in the American market with a more traditional full-court press of television appearances, award show performances, festivals, and meet-and-greets. The Dream Academy model—in which fan voting counted for a portion of contestants’ final scores, and appeared to influence the judges’ votes—formalizes what has already been happening in the music industry: You used to have fans because you made music, but now you only get to make music after getting enough fans.
Growing up in the ’90s, when pop stars came on my radar, they were fully formed musical supersoldiers, dosed with some special serum out of the public eye; hard work was surely put into their craft, but the capacity for that hard work was a byproduct of how special and different they naturally were. The K-pop world, however, emphasizes idol training. K-pop stars are made, not born, and the process of getting young artists shipshape before debuting is often an important part of their lore (the nine-member K-pop group TWICE, for example, was formed on a show called Sixteen).
The training is so difficult because the scrutiny is so intense. Idols must do complicated, synchronized choreography; they must deliver technically competent vocals while executing that choreography; they must maintain alluring facial expressions while dancing and singing. ’90s pop icons often lip-synced at live performances, but a valued trait of K-pop is being “stable,” keeping vocals as consistent as possible while doing taxing dance routines.
Likewise, something newer to me in this K-pop/A-pop synthesis was the centering of the industry itself, the awareness of a marketplace and its requirements, the celebration of the people in charge of business. The technical host of Dream Academy may be an animated circle, but the industry talking heads on Pop Star Academy—executives, creative directors, marketing professionals—are the true leaders of the narrative. “These girls… have control of their own fate, depending on how hard they work and how bad they want it,” says John Janick, chairman and CEO of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, a man you could argue is very much in control of the fate of “the girls.”
And before we saw close-ups of the faces of any of the contestants in Dream Academy, we were greeted with an overlay of corporate logos that heralded the alignment of media conglomerates like a royal wedding. We also eavesdropped on messages from other HYBE artists, who speak encouraging words in unison in front of drab backgrounds. The members of Le Sserafim clap and cheer: “The global girl group debut project with HYBE and Universal Music Group’s Interscope-Geffen Records has begun!” To paraphrase Mitski, sometimes a brand feels like family.
When the merged label moved forward with the Netflix doc, it was a little surprising that they allowed us to see a more fraught portrait of the group’s formation. But between the rise of confessional social media use and the complete obliteration of privacy for the average American, the era of the impervious pop star titan is over. We need to watch girls sweat, bleed, and cry before they become perfect in our eyes. Otherwise, how do we know it’s real?
Of course, once the transformation from girl to girl group is complete, tears and complaints are no longer welcome. Everyone must be grateful, work hard, and adhere to the correct corporate messaging. The girls may be silly, and they may be sexy, but they won’t ever be sad again.
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Level 4: The scent represents an event with an intrinsic property. This temporal aroma is devoid of location or physical property, but a shared idea of the property is still understood.
November 2023. Six young women stand in a row—Megan, Daniela, Lara, Yoonchae, Sophia, Manon. A dizzying mix of cultures and backgrounds: Chinese Singaporean/Hawaiian, Cuban/Venezuelan, Sri Lankan Tamil, Korean, Filipina, Swiss-Ghanaian. There are a few differences in their accessories—one woman wears a necktie instead of a ribbon tie, and one wears combat boots instead of the standard sheer knee-high sock/chunky shoe combo—but all wear the same outfit: a gray tailored uniform, with a structured jacket on top, a pleated skirt on the bottom, and a white shirt underneath.
The constants in Dream Academy were fitted, mid-competition, with uniforms. They conveyed the synergy of the group and the adherence to the cultural code of K-pop (which has a long history of putting groups in school uniforms). Both masculine and girly, the suits gave off something between student and corporate girlboss. They wore them for the announcement of the finalized group and never put the uniforms on again.
The first six months of their existence were calm and familiar. They wore glittering color-coordinated dresses onstage, and comfortable and simple Y2K separates in videos. Their music had a spun-sugar brittleness, with lyrics about moving on from a boring crush, being yourself, and trying new things. HYBE and Geffen had spent almost three years forming and training this group, and they were… fine.
Then came “Gnarly,” a cacophonous track full of deep-fried non sequiturs and unsheathed-sword sound effects that sound like loosening the bolts on a Jock Jam until it collapses into a pile of scrap metal. If you could describe what “Gnarly” is about, it is technically about describing everything in the world as “gnarly,” but it is really a song about writing a song. “Oh my god, that new beat!” the girls drawl. “Oh, we’re in a session tonight, gang gang!” “This song’s so lit, congratulations!” For two minutes and nineteen seconds of clanging and stomping, KATSEYE exists outside of the boring past or depressing future, instead occupying a giggly, giddy present. Outside opinions are moot, history is irrelevant. What matters is the act of creation.
Does it matter that KATSEYE did not write the song? (There are five people credited for the song’s composition, including hyperpop artist Alice Longyu Gao.) It does not seem to matter to them. In fact, they relish in the artificial nature of modern song creation. “Making beats for a boring dumb bitch!” they yell. It doesn’t matter how boring or dumb you are, as long as you have a gnarly beat of your very own.
The first couple of KATSEYE singles were pleasant and unmemorable, but “Gnarly” was different: deranged, willfully stupid, crass, addicting. The harsh, cartoonish aesthetic was an unusual choice for a group in search of a hit, given the dominant flavor of pop right now is country. But “Gnarly” fits right in the absurdist realm of children’s entertainment, a slurry of traditional media and internet content, delivered through infinite screens with varying levels of parental oversight, optimized for maximum attention. Loud sounds, bright colors, the conversion of dollars to Robux and V-Bucks. A month after “Gnarly” was released, KATSEYE performed the clean version at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Never has the deluge of green slime felt more inevitable.
HYBE x Geffen clearly noticed how much chatter, negative and positive, “Gnarly” inspired. The follow-up singles generally stuck close to its vibe: ridiculous lyrics paired with hyperprocessed music. Spoken, repetitive choruses transform easily into vocal stims. Beats simulate what it might feel like to get hit by a truck over and over again. KATSEYE revels in randomness, smashing together different phrases and images so out of context they feel like glitches or hallucinations. “Pinky Up” is full of semi-sensical phrases with missing verbs—“we Mona Lisa,” “we batshit”—and puts forth the idea that if you get arrested for shaking ass in a parking lot, you should simply laugh it off. In the video for “Iconic By Mistake,” a song about how internet hate is secretly fandom, the girls chant “Hatin’ me is like all you do, breakfast ’til dinner” while dancing under sparkling letters that say “CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS.” On “Internet Girl,” another song about how internet hate is secretly fandom, they transcend written language entirely. “Eat zucchini!” they yell, then attempt to explain themselves: “Do you read me? Like the emoji?” This is, I suppose, as close a music act can get to using actual emojis as lyrics, if such a thing were possible.
When words are so divorced from their meanings, it’s easy to chalk things up to a decline in literacy, a degradation of critical thinking skills, a devolution of common sense. But the history of pop music, music driven by youth, is the history of novelty. Though KATSEYE’s creation was stewarded by record labels who demand consistent adherence to their traditional codes and values, there is something nonconformist happening here. The girls are doing something new.
April 2026. Five young women stand in a row in a nondescript hallway. The individual elements of their grey-and-pastel outfits feel chosen at random, perhaps plucked from a claw machine with a pile of miscellaneous prizes. Every item is a bit off-kilter. A bikini top somehow has lapels; a prize ribbon is pinned to a waist trainer; cat ears poke out of a baseball cap; a belt that says “FREAK” encircles a miniskirt; a pillbox hat is spray-painted with the word “kawaii” in cursive; a Tamagotchi toy dangles from a choker. Bras are layered, belts are stacked. Questions arise. Can an outfit be made entirely out of accessories? Can an outfit be made entirely out of underwear? What does it mean to be sexy? Is being sexy possible when you are wearing a baseball cap with cat ears? Do the usual factors of clothing—cut, color, length, textile type, size, and styling—still matter when it comes to expressing one’s identity? One of the original young women from the lineup is not even present. There are no strange items for her to wear.
The editing is so disorienting that it’s hard to even tell what the group is wearing. The camera shakes, the high-contrast lighting obscures some of the girls in the back of their various formations, and the scene is intercut with the same choreography done in an entirely different set of clothes. There’s a flash of grommets and sequins, another of zebra print, another of tight spandex in a complicated pattern, of a gold nameplate necklace the size of a bra. But it’s hard to clock what’s going on. Everything is moving too fast.
Level Ω: the scent represents a property detached from any object, the absence of an object is in fact part of the scent. Total abstraction.
The video for KATSEYE’s latest single, “Hootie Frutti.” Megan’s body, framed from knee to hip. She’s wearing short white shorts through which her underwear is visible. The camera pans up to her chest as disembodied hands glide up her legs, and stops to show her hands uncapping a small pink jar attached to her hip by a gold chain. The jar says “gui-gui” on it. In the next shot, Megan holds the contents of the gui-gui jar: a glob of pale pink slime, looking vaguely like something expelled from a human body. She stretches the slime close to her face, making alluring expressions behind a spray of glimmering shower water. “Hootie frutti,” she chants, “nice and juicy.” The slime then disappears for the remainder of the video.
A commercial for a new type of Hershey’s candy bar. Members of KATSEYE sing and dance to their song “PINKY UP” on a train full of annoyed commuters. Gradually, their antics win over a couple of acolytes, who start voguing. The annoyed commuters smile to themselves. The phrase “pinky up” is represented visually by two hands holding the two flavors of candy bar (Salted Caramel Creme and Affogato) and raising and lowering their pinkies. Otherwise, there is no specific connection to pinkies, a finger not particularly essential to the eating of a candy bar.
A TikTok. Three members of the group stand in a Walmart, holding up the vinyl record version of their latest EP, WILD. They urge you to purchase it, giving you three reasons to do so. “If you need a new banger and new choreo, I got you,” Yoonchae says; choreography is not something you can see by listening to a vinyl record. “Because you’ve been asking, so we delivered more vocals,” Lara says; why would “vocals” be something past releases did not “deliver”? “Another reason is because you love the color yellow,” says Daniela, holding a yellow record, which has nothing to do with the music at all. The video ends with two takes of the same ending, maybe a meta-commentary on the format of the ad, more likely a way to diffuse how awkward the three group members look.
Three years after their formation, KATSEYE have released three EPs, but no albums. At a time when auteurship is unusually valued in the pop world, and in an industry where singers get co-writer credits even with minimal participation (“change a word, get a third,” meaning a third of the royalties), the only songwriting credit received by anyone in the group went to Lara, on a song that only exists in a physical version of WILD sold at Target. The two reality shows that documented their formation showed intense dance training and vocal coaching, yet their singles favor chanting and shouting over singing, and their more melodic songs tend to blur their voices together in a way that makes it difficult to tell who’s singing at any given time. Increasingly, the dancing and dressing of the group feel highly sexualized; increasingly, the group engages in product placement and collaborations with brands that make products geared toward children.
Other acts have been discovered via reality television; had their songs written entirely by other people; participated in corporate partnerships through endorsements and product placements; concealed extraordinary musical talent to make sillier, broader music; or maintained a provocative image while courting elementary school-aged fans. Never have these situations converged in a single, multi-girled entity, one that, despite its impressive streaming numbers, magazine covers, primetime slots at festivals, arena-size tours, and large social media audience, still lacks something pop acts are generally expected to have: hit songs. KATSEYE’s biggest hit, a Latin-flavored ballad called “Gabriela,” peaked at #21.
The 2001 movie Josie & The Pussycats showed the exaggerated rise of a fictional girl band plucked from obscurity and signed to a major label, who overnight began spiffing up in a powder room full of Revlon products and sleeping in Target-logo bedding. This exaggeration of the Y2K teen pop boom is simply how we do things now. With every brand deal and product launch—KATSEYE turned into six shades of Glossier lip oil; KATSEYE turned into six different kinds of Lush soap; KATSEYE turned into a special flavor of fried chicken at Jollibee; KATSEYE dancing in denim separates from the Gap to someone else’s song; KATSEYE releasing more than 30 CD and vinyl variants of their last EP, each with some combination of collectible items—you can see the wheels turning in real time, infrastructure built to create a feedback loop of attention, single, video, endorsement deal, praise or backlash, repeat. We watch the aura of superstardom being crafted in front of us, and the corporate forces that make it happen are perhaps meant to be as impressive, if not more so, than the superstars themselves.
So what is KATSEYE? A girl group, yes, but also a girl group-shaped concept. They do enough of what girl groups used to do to remind you of what girl groups used to be, while making money being what girl groups currently are: content-creation machines, advertising vehicles, representatives of a record label. Pop music has always maintained a delicious tension between the sublime and the commercial—remember Britney Spears and Madonna’s effervescent song “Me Against The Music,” whose remix was loaded onto a CD popped into the lids of fountain drinks at Sbarro—and as the distance between music and the music business continues to lessen, this tension threatens to break entirely.
I look at KATSEYE and think about money. I can’t help it. The salaries of the record label employees, of the people who own and maintain the digital platforms that disseminate KATSEYE’s music and posts, of the camera operators and editors who made the reality shows. The fees paid to stylists, choreographers, and music video directors. The endorsement deals for fine jewelry, chocolate bars, auto insurance, and slime. The ticket sales for concerts and festivals. The royalties paid to the songwriters. The money the girls make, and how they split it if some of the girls stop participating in the project.
Then I think about me, how attention is something I “pay,” and wonder how much my attention is therefore worth. I have spent a lot of time thinking about KATSEYE, listening to their music, watching their content. I’m a woman in her thirties, listening to music made by women barely in their twenties, whose target audience might be ten-year-olds. I clearly care about this group more than many people, but there’s a group of people who care about them more than anything else in their life. Any ambivalence does not come through in the cold hard numbers. I am a stream, I am a view, I am an impression. And I keep coming back.
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