Female fans key to success of K-pop girl groups
Four years after its release, the song Rollin’ by K-pop girl group Brave Girls is one of 2021’s biggest hits in South Korea. Though much of the media narrative has been focused on how South Korea’s enlisted men have been supporting the band, that is just part of the story.
Professor Kim Jung-won, an ethnomusicologist and adjunct lecturer at South Korea’s Yonsei University, studies Korean music culture, K-pop, fandom and gender studies, and thinks female fans are integral to the success of K-pop girl groups and this is being overlooked.
“The resurgence of K-pop girl groups and their old songs has been sparked by videos of their live performances their male fans took in local events and shared through social media,” Kim says, pointing to when EXID’s 2014 song Up & Down became one of 2015’s biggest hits after a fan-cam, recorded by a male fan, went viral.
“Once the fan-cams go viral, many viewers, including female audience members, get interested in the girl groups. Based on my observation of K-pop fandom, the ‘female’ audience has played far more important roles in promoting the girl groups and their music than male fans.”
A similar instance happened with Brave Girls, when a video of their performances embedded with comments from audiences praising Rollin’ went viral earlier this year.
While female fans are often acknowledged as aiding the careers of male K-pop artists – especially boy bands – they are also prominent factors in the success of girl groups.
“Women have tended to spend their money and time on music and musicians through a variety of fan activities more actively and intensely than [those men who] merely consume Kpop girl groups as objects for male visual, and even sexual, pleasure,” Kim says.
Some of the most impactful groups in K-pop, ranging from Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 to Blackpink and Itzy, have seen success primarily built on the way other women have seen themselves represented by them.
According to Kim, fandom spaces are often where women across the world showcase their power after facing difficulties in male-dominated industries and even within their personal lives.
And it’s not just a single group of fans cheering them on. Although inter-group fan feuds do exist, female fans of girl groups are more likely to listen to and cheer on bands other than their favourite act.
“This solidarity is related to a new way in which young Korean females recognise and practice feminism that can engage with their cultural, political and social acts in their daily lives,” Kim says.
Even though they are supportive, and Kim feels female fans support girl groups as a sign of feminist solidarity, there’s always a bit of tension because many of these acts are being produced with a focus on male audiences.
Brave Girls’ ongoing success has seen other songs of theirs chart in South Korea, and they have become mainstays on South
Korea’s television broadcasts in recent months. But they are not the only girl group in the past year that has seen a resurgence in popularity. Another are Laboum with their 2016 song Journey to Atlantis.
Oh My Girl, a relatively popular girl group, has also seen older songs and B-sides gain traction over the past year; the girl group saw a lot of support after another popular female singer, IU, covered their B-side Dolphin last year.
According to Kim, some of this may derive from the success of the 2019 television programme Queendom, where several K-pop girl groups faced off, and their music was reintroduced and reinterpreted. The show was hugely popular in South Korea, and spurred interest in many female acts.