Katseye, America and the dark side of K-pop perfection
The Global Story
The episode explores the meteoric rise of Katseye, a global girl group formed through a high-stakes collaboration between HYBE and Geffen Re
Key takeaways
- Katseye was formed through 'The Debut Dream Academy,' a process that saw 120,000 applicants narrowed down to six members.
- The group's success is heavily driven by 'meme music' designed for viral consumption on platforms like TikTok.
Main topics
- Katseye's global rise
- K-pop training methodologies
Notable quotes
We're not forming a friend group. We're forming a girl group.
Conclusion
The episode provides a critical look at whether the highly manufacture
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 1 (0:06) Is it okay for Gen Z job applicants to take iced coffee into an interview? That's the question burning up social media following a viral TikTok video from an American recruiter. I'm William Lee Adams. Join me on What in the World to hear all about this intergenerational conflict in the workplace. What in the World is an award-winning podcast from the BBC World Service. We explain what's going on in the world every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Find us wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:39) Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find the Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (1:08) The global girl group Cat's Eye kicked off its first world tour earlier this month and our colleague Mark Savage went to check them out on the second night in London. It Speaker 3 (1:18) was an assault on the senses. In every respect, the cheering for the band started an hour before they came on stage. They were playing their music videos, and so everybody was cheering for their favorite member. But even there were moments where they had an instructional video on how to put the batteries inside the light stick that you could buy at the merch stall. And people were cheering for that as well. Speaker 5 (1:41) Cat's Eye is an attempt to see if K-pop can be replicated outside of South Korea, an effort by the biggest K-pop company in the world, HYBE, in collaboration with the major American record label, Geffen. Speaker 4 (1:53) The group was formed through this reality TV show in which six members, including three Americans, beat out thousands of others from across the world. And in the two years since their debut single, Cat's Eye has built up a legion of fans. In Speaker 3 (2:07) the seats where I am, because I'm very old and need to sit down during a concert, it was all kids, kids and their parents. And those kids knew every dance move. They danced the entire show with them for two hours. So the venue was boiling hot. by the end of it, but it was really, really interesting just to kind of experience what it's like because, you know, in a very short space of time, they have become the biggest pop group in the world after their label mates, BTS. Speaker 5 (2:36) Cat's Eye goes on tour here in the US next month and all the concerts are sold out. This weekend, they're featured as the musical guest on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Speaker 4 (2:47) But with fame comes notoriety. Speaker 4 (2:51) And as Cat's Eye's star has risen, the group has faced multiple controversies during its short time together. It's put an intense spotlight on the working standards of the K-pop industry. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. And I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. Speaker 5 (3:10) And today on The Global Story, can K-pop be replicated outside of South Korea? Speaker 4 (3:25) Regular listeners to The Global Story might have heard Mark Savage, the BBC's music correspondent last week on our show, talking about Ed Sheeran and the Macklemore drama. As it turns out, we had to invite him back this week because he's also the BBC's top cat's eye expert. Shall we do the... Cat's Eye Stats Eye. Oh, let's Speaker 3 (3:45) do that. They are one of the top 100 most streamed artists in the world on Spotify. They are in the top 10 on YouTube. They've 21 million followers on TikTok, 10 million on Instagram. They played Coachella Festival earlier this year. They were nominated for two Grammys and they performed at the Grammys. They really have kind of taken over the conversation in terms of... pop music and that kind of very global pop music that they make, but also sits adjacent to the K-pop industry, which is really Speaker 4 (4:20) where they received all of their training. What is K-pop, Mark? Well, as Speaker 3 (4:25) the name suggests, it's pop music that comes from Korea. And it's been through dozens of permutations over the last 20 years or so when it's really become a global commercial force. Obviously, the two bands that everybody knows are BTS and Blackpink, who are kind of hip-hop adjacent. But there is a huge variety of music within the entire K-pop industry. It just draws in influences from all over the world and synthesizes it into this kind of bizarre Frankenstein pop monster that is initially off-putting. But once you're tuned into it, I find it some of the most compelling and fascinating music being made right now. Speaker 4 (5:06) Well, talking about the sounds, I have to lean into this fact because the lawyers will not allow us to play the music for rights reasons. So we are going to do an episode about Cat's Eye while we are not allowed to play their music. But you can tell us, Mark, what does their music sound like? And like, what makes a K-pop song exactly? Speaker 3 (5:28) But one of the interesting things about Cat's Eye is seeing where a song will go because they will fracture off into about four or five different directions that you can't predict at the start of the song. Speaker 5 (5:38) This is where I'm like, this is not maybe for me. I had expected maybe more Golden, the very popular song that like all the kids would have been listening to from K-pop team and Unders. I'm really going to date myself. But when I heard girl group, I kind of thought, oh, maybe it's going to be like Spice Girls. Definitely wasn't that either. It was a lot of like repetition of the same word with a vibe that. I could not place, like musical genre-wise, I could not place it at all. Speaker 3 (6:05) No, and I think that's kind of their calling card is that you don't know what you're going to get from one track to the next. You know, the early Cat's Eye stuff, songs like Touch and Debut kind of lent onto US R &B and hip-hop tropes, but then at a song like Gnarly, Gnarly is very, very aggressive and in your face, but then the single that came after that, Gabriela, which was co-written by Charli XCX, is this beautiful kind of Spanish band. that leans on the Venezuelan-Cuban roots of Daniela, who's one of the chief singer-dancers in the band. And I think one of the things that's tricky about Cat's Eye is that you could like 25 % of what they do and absolutely hate the rest of it. And that's kind of something they've lent into as a band. Speaker 4 (6:50) What about the origins of Cat's Eye? Because spoiler alert to our listeners, they did not meet in school and play their first songs together in a garage. So how did they come together, Mark? What's the story? Speaker 3 (7:02) Yeah, the origin story of Cat's Eye is really interesting because they are a joint project. On one side, you've got HYBE, who are one of the biggest entertainment companies in South Korea. They're responsible for BTS. And then on the other side, you have Geffen, one of the biggest, most storied record labels in America. They have Olivia Rodrigo and Guns N' Roses on their books. And those two companies decided that you could apply the K-pop model to a group