Fourth-gen girl group ITZY took a sharp turn from its self-love-themed discography with “Cake” (2023) – the song repeated “Cake” 25 times out of the 46 words in the chorus. The group chose to do so to garner traction on TikTok following less successful releases such as “Cheshire” (2022).
In recent years, K-pop has gained unprecedented global recognition on short-form video platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. On these platforms, artists interact with K-pop fans worldwide through viral dance challenges.
However, the strategy sparks debate about its impact on K-pop’s musical integrity. Critics argue artists increasingly prioritize virality over depth. As a result, the industry focuses on repetitive hooks and shorter songs tailored for mainstream appeal, rather than musical depth and artistry. This has transformed K-pop from its own genre of music to a tycoon that churns out Tik-Tok-challenge songs.
According to music critic Daeho Kim, this phenomenon comes from the “tendency to focus on elements like beats, rather than the core melody, which takes more time to develop.” To sustain a fan base in the fourth-gen battlefield, producers must prioritize quantity over quality – rookie groups average just 2.5 months between releases, compared to 14.8 months between releases a decade ago.
Hook-based songs also cater to Gen Z’s and Gen Alphas, who spend extensive amounts of time scrolling through short-form content. Songwriters grab their attention with bite-sized snippets. The time constraints of the minute-long clips encourage songs to deliver their main elements more quickly and reinforce the trend of shorter track lengths from early 2010s hit songs like BIGBANG’s “Fantastic Baby” (3:52) to MEOVV’s “Body” (2:03) – nearly half the length of songs a decade ago.
As song lengths decrease, interludes into the song have also become abbreviated. Songs with lengthy intros like SISTAR’s “나혼자” or GFRIEND’s “너 그리고 나” from the 2010s rarely appear in today’s music scene. For example, IVE’s “After Like,” one of the most popular tracks of 2022, starts with the lyrics “또 모르지 내 마음이 저 날씨처럼 바뀔지” (“I don’t know, my feelings might change like the weather”) just three seconds into the song.
Alongside this musical trend, K-pop choreography moves toward “gestural point choreography” – dances now focus less on complex leg movements and more on intricate and refined upper-body gestures, as evident in the “1-pyeong dance.” Nayeon’s “POP!” challenge video exemplifies this recent trend with its synchronized finger and arm routine.
Daeho Kang, a columnist from Opinion News, links this change to the competitive nature of the K-pop industry. “Idol groups have long been largely performance-oriented, but as the competition grew intense with more teams debuting in the scene, standing out required them to perform ground-breaking performances. As a result, performance-oriented choreography grew harder for audiences to relate to which naturally led to the popularity of simple, replicable challenges.”
These shifts, driven by novelty and viral success, however, come at a cost. While virality is crucial to K-pop’s global success, it erodes artistic integrity and leads to formulaic content – songs that follow predictable structures and rely on repetitive hooks. Many artists who follow this trend risk losing their unique music styles and compromising their artistry for fleeting trends.
For instance, Kep1er’s “Wadada” repeats meaningless hooks and lacks depth in its message. The song feels more like a formulaic attempt to ride the viral wave of catchy, easy-to-dance-to tracks rather than producing quality music. With the rise of challenge-oriented performances, artists will inevitably generate similar styles, as these choreographies have inherent limitations in their execution.
This shift, both in discography and choreography, jeopardizes the core identity of K-pop, where profit-seeking producers sacrifice unique performances and artistic individuality in favor of mass appeal. Although idols cannot ignore public traction, they must strike a balance between viral trends and meaningful artistry to salvage the genre’s identity.
